Ghosts of the Old Republic
by hiatus2
Summary: When one left turn is more altering than death, Obi-wan is responsible for righting a galaxy that isn't even his own. Now, if he could just stop misplacing his padawan, things would go alot more smoother. AU, very.
1. Chapter 1

_In a not so different Universe, where one left turn was as life altering as death, Jedi Master Qui-gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-wan Kenobi have just arrived on Coruscant to deliver the news that a long thought extinct order of dark Jedi, the Sith, have once again begun to roam the galaxy. This is not the only news that comes to light. Anakin Skywalker, a boy Master Qui-gon Jinn is convinced is the fabled "Chosen One", has also been brought to stand in front of the Jedi Council and perhaps become a Jedi himself..._

_Scene I: The Sphere_

_ Where is he? _His search for Anakin Skywalker had begun all of forty-five minutes ago, Obi-wan didn't dedicate that sort of time to finding his own lightsaber (not that he would ever have the audacity to lose it in the first place, thank you very much, but he was trying to make a point) let alone some small human he scarcely tolerated.

One may ask: Why wasn't Master Qui-gon minding the boy?

To which another, far more patient Jedi than he, would reply: Because Obi-wan was still his padawan and thus it was perfectly obvious that he should be relegated to baby-sitter when the Republic was on the verge of galactic civil unrest, that's why.

As he came to the grand archway of the Relics Archive Obi-wan thought, _surely his path would not deviate so far...?_

Obi-wan entered the cavernous room. It's high domed ceiling obscured by the darkening twilight. Rows upon rows of wooden crates seemed to line onwards until eternity. Each box emblazoned with a name a number and a date, clearly catalogued and arranged, like a giant library of objects instead of books, though Obi-wan didn't doubt there were probably a few books in there as well.

_There you are._

The child stood looking at a giant golden orb with mild distrust and Obi-wan wondered for a moment at the look of preternatural calculation on Anakin's face. The orb that the boy was so fiercely scrutinizing – a watery translucent gold that spanned the width of a small satellite– appeared on Curoscant only a few days ago. Silent, unassuming but huge in size, as if a giant toddler had forgotten to put his toys away– the thing was all a big mystery.

And so naturally Obi-wan and Qui-gon jinn were sent to investigate the simple matter before they were sent out to negotiate with the Trade Federation and their intentions toward the Naboo. Master Qui-gon couldn't make heads or tails of it and when the situation on Naboo had become... dubious, the council had agreed they should transport it back to the Temple Relics Archive.

And this is where he found his spur-of-the-moment ward after his meeting with the Jedi Council.

Obi-wan sighed. To be honest he had a very bad feeling about that orb. The council was convinced it was a practical joke from the neighboring Litgarean system. Planet Philos had a mischievous streak in its religious holidays and had set a precedent of anonymously "gifting" large, unwelcome, though fairly harmless, objects to neighboring unsuspecting populations, much to the chagrin of the Jedi who were sent as the disposal unit. The timing seemed to fit. And though Obi-wan suggested they simply ask the Philoseans, it was the third day of the Noelmas Festival and by then the people of Philos were barely coherent enough to remember where they left their own homes let alone any thing else of import.

The orb seemed harmless enough, it's sheer size was the only burden but Obi-wan...Obi-wan had a very bad feeling about that orb.

_Yes, let's bring the highly suspicious, completely unfamiliar, alien artifact to the center of the Universe's keepers of peace. I'm sure it's only just here for decoration, _Obi-wan thought dryly.

He wondered, for the first time, at the integrity of the council's common sense. The rogue Jedi Master Qui-gon would be so proud.

As it was, Master Qui-gon seemed to have forgotten, or simply didn't care, about the matter. In fact, not much other than the training of the 'Chosen One' seemed to cross his Master's mind of late.

"You missed Master Qui-gon's apartment leagues ago. It was a left in that last corridor." Obi-wan said at last to the boy, his hands folded inside the sleeves of his robes. The boy startled and Obi-wan's brows knit slightly.

"Oh," Anakin said turning his sad blue eyes towards him. "I thought you were Qui-gon."

"You should pay more attention." Obi-wan said and frowned. The boy was practically melancholic. He remembered well what it felt like to be young and unwanted. There was a sudden dull pain in his chest and a slow, bone-chilling cold spread through Obi-wan. He felt the Force stir around him.

"What?" the boy said his brows knitting in bemusement.

"As untrained as you are you still should have been able to feel my approach in the force."

"Okaaay."

The word was drawn out obnoxiously and Obi-wan wasn't sure why he was bothering with the impromptu lesson in the Jedi arts. He wasn't even particularly fond of the boy, and his sadness was of no consequence to him no matter how familiar. But it was too late, the die had been cast and the boy was solidly focused on him now. It was a little disconcerting how those bright blue eyes followed him.

"Close your eyes, please." he said with a bit of impatience.

The boy eyed him warily and Obi-wan wondered why he ever thought this was a good idea.

"Hey...you're not going to pull something funny on me are ya'?" Anakin narrowed his eyes in suspicion, "Mom always kept telling me to watch out for the pretty ones. I thought she meant Padme, but maybe you're just as bad."

Obi-wan gave a slight nod, "I see. In that case enjoy yourself," he said and as he turned to leave Obi-wan added, "But I was under the impression you _wanted_ to be a Jedi."

"Wait!" Anakin said, Obi-wan turned around as Anakin slowly slid one doubtful eye closed and then the second and sighed impatiently, "Okay, what am I supposed to be feeling?"

Slipping his eyes closed as well Obi-wan replied, "Just concentrate. We're both Force-sensitive, you tell me."

After a moment of impatient sighing, Obi-wan heard a faint gasp and knew instantly that Anakin felt the pulse in the Force.

Anakin was swept under by the sensation. It was like a strange unfurling, like something unnaturally natural, like a flower kept in the dark, like foreign spices, like everything terrible and good all in one. The energy was intense, but not threatening; Obi-wan felt like a bright beacon of light against the blankness of a void. Anakin didn't understand how he had never realized it before, and now that he did he knew with a certainty that was usually reserved for mechanical engineering that he would forever see Obi-wan in this light, would eternally recognize the young Jedi beside him.

"Wow." He said, opened his eyes and beamed at a startled Obi-wan, then he looked back at the Orb as if he just realised it was still there, "So, what is this thing, anyway?"

"As far as any conclusive reports go, it's an unidentified foreign object of peculiar physical properties, questionable origin and unknown purpose."

"So, you have no idea."

"In a manner of speaking, that would be correct." he agreed reluctantly, "But Master believes it to be a harmless practical joke by the neighboring planetary system."

"And you think Qui-gon is full of it." Anakin grinned.

Obi-wan looked at Anakin sharply, but with amusement.

"It would do you well to learn a little restraint in your disrespect, young one. But yes, My Master and I are in disagreement. And that's _Master_ Qui-gon, to you." Obi-wan added, he didn't smile but his cerulean eyes were amiably mischievous and bright.

Anakin's beaming face shadowed like a dark cloud passing over the sun and he suddenly frowned.

"I'm not going to become a Jedi, am I?" side slanted eyes slid over to Obi-wan.

"It is unlikely the council would take such a risk." replied Obi-wan. He didn't say it to be cruel. In fact Obi-wan saw it as a bit of a mercy to keep the child from believing in something that would very likely not come to pass. Anakin's anger spiked and Obi-wan nearly recoiled from it's intensity, but he kept his features calm and his eyes stoic. _Ah_, he thought, _and that right there is why I believe it._

The boy was perhaps unique, likely dangerous, and certainly volatile. Why did Qui-gon jinn refuse to see it? Obi-wan would never know.

Anakin bristled under the emotionless face of the Jedi.

_Bastard,_ Anakin thought, _doesn't he know how bad I'm feeling right now? _

He only wanted some reassurance, however unfounded. It was cold here, and his mother was so so far away, and for a moment he thought that Obi-wan might want to be friends. _Well, who needs him_, he thought, even as he ached for the man's friendship.

Obi-wan wasn't the first person to be kind to him, and Qui-gon was certainly a better Jedi, but Obi-wan shone like the brightest constellations of Tatooine's sky.

He felt Obi-wan's aura still gyrating like a small, local pulsar, shining with unseen light. If he closed his eyes he could still feel his body hungrily reach out, attempt to pull in the energy and assimilate it. Every molecule in his body felt the pull of Obi-wan's Force energy, drinking it as though fighting off the ache of long depravation.

_I wish I never met him. I wish he were my friend, _he thought contrarily.

Anakin tried to relax, he really didn't want Obi-wan to know how deeply his incontinence hurt him. Because no matter how he tried to spin it, that's what it felt like to Anakin. Abandonment. It was cut and dried desertion and if he really tried he thought that he might actually be able to set his feelings on fire.

Obi-wan watched the boy. Almost reflexively he placed a hand on Anakin's shoulder. Either in warning or reassurance even Obi-wan was unsure, but the outcome was the same regardless of intention; Anakin deflated, anger vanishing as quickly as it had sparked and stared at the ground. Uncomfortable with the familiarity of the action, Obi-wan pulled his hand back and tucked it back into his robe's sleeve.

Comforting small creatures was his _Master's_ specialty not _his_.

He stared at the bowed blond head and had the sudden thought that perhaps his Master had been thoughtlessly cruel. Anakin was not a pet to be picked up and left again. He was a child. A child who had been whisked away in the fury of good intentions, with the promise of guidance and care only to encounter uncertainty, possible abandonment, or worse back to the life of slavery that he had escaped only to be hurled into once again.

Obi-wan vacillated erratically between promising the boy things that a Jedi had no right promising and running as far away, as fast as humanly possible. Obi-wan wished for many things. He was unfortunate.

As it was he shouldn't have bothered, the orb's surface rippled once, twice. Time seemed to slow down, elongate and collapse. It wavered in and out of his vision, struggling to keep its shape, it pulled Obi-wan within its embrace– inside it's round belly. The last thing Obi-wan saw before he was sucked into the orb was Anakin's frozen face: eyes round and mouth formed into a small 'oh' of surprise and dismay. Obi-wan's bad feeling had become downright _appalling._

* * *

Obi-wan squinted his eyes against the brightness that blinded him, a wild burst of stars flashed a flourescent after image in the back of his retinas as a sudden headache behind his temples arched and he stumbled forward. He looked around and had no idea where he was. One moment he had been speaking with Anakin Skywalker padawan-in-waiting and the next he was...not.

Disorientation and nausea ruled, until a small juvenile groan made his head snap to the ground so fast he was sure he had whiplash. _Oh, stars above,_ he thought. But sure enough there on the red ground was the small huddled and unconscious shape of Anakin Skywalker.

He thought, on some really basic _oh, shit_ level, that this was going to be bad.

The electric thrum of lightsabers had him on alert even before he felt the disturbance in the Force. Only years of training kept him from making a fool of himself.

Obi-wan crouched behind the dune of red rock that kept him and the boy out of sight as two men– No, two _Jedi_– were engaged in fierce combat. The hum of their lightsabers echoed throughout as their weapons met again and again.

Obi-wan watched it all with growing alarm.

Their moves were fluid, relentless, and full of such fire that Obi-wan felt that _this_ would be a far more likely reason they'd burn up into ash, and not the very real river of lava that coursed like blood through beating veins throughout the terrain they were all so precariously perched upon.

The shorter Jedi in brown made in an impressive jump over the Jedi in black, flipping over backwards and somersaulting to higher ground.

Obi-wan saw it end even before it happened. And though he felt a curl of relief unfold in his stomach at the advantage this position afforded the Jedi in the brown cloak there was also unflinching dread there, as well. As if the cloud of rage and cruelty that signaled the presence of every Dark user- and surely it enveloped the man in black– was not enough for Obi-wan to want to encourage the Jedi in brown to victory.

How curious.

The sudden crescendo of pain, like a spike of steel jammed through his temple, was almost enough for Obi-wan to cry out. The scream startled him, at first he thought he had cried out, but the scream belonged instead to someone else.

And suddenly it was over and as both men fell, Obi-wan understood two things: firstly, the Jedi in brown had purposely missed. The blow that should have ended in death merely left the other maimed and unconscious. And secondly, the Jedi in brown, the one falling to his knees, the one dying before his very eyes, was himself.

Obi-wan stood away from his position behind the rock, suddenly panting for breath. Panic had settled like a lead weight into his bones and he could not seem to move fast enough as the other him– the bearded him, the dying him– dragged his butchered body along the ground. Obi-wan trembled; he griped the edge of the stone until his hands whitened but he could not steady himself. He stared at the bearded man in disbelief, a sense of denial.

He could feel the Force bend and bow before him, a physical thing that tore at his mind and body. The other Obi-wan felt it as well, he screamed and the lunacy in that sound made Obi-wan's blood run cold. He half-ran half-stumbled to his other self and enfolded him in his arms.

But as soon as they touched his mind was invaded.

It was sudden and immediate, forcing its way into the front of his cerebral vision like it was desperate to be noticed. A shout of pain so loud that he almost covered his ears. It reverberated, it tore at him. It was raping his thoughts, and he couldn't understand the source. Like kites without streamers of meaning, until he saw the pictures to the story.

At some moments chilling at others desperately sad, the images sent a keening wail of loss within Obi-wan. Desolation. The death of a father. Duty and a boy who was brother and son even as he fell into darkness. Thoughts... images, actually, disjointed recollections he couldn't really place flew by. Anakin sleeping. Anakin angry and righteous. Anakin tinkering with his machines. Laughing Anakin. Crying Anakin. Anakin accidently blowing up the Jedi Mechanic's lab...

Anakin, Anakin. _How could you_, Anakin?

His name was a mantra in a prayer over and over in his head.

Obi-wan was flooded with feelings so strong– so overpowering, that it nearly blew out all other senses– for a boy who he'd met only a few hours ago. He was feeling a lifetime of repressed emotion in one brief touch.

He noticed all this with uncanny clarity as time seemed to slow; the minutes elongated, drawn out like pooling mollases even as the drumming of his heartbeat– and the beat of the heart belonging to the young man who's rhythm once matched his beat for beat when he held its owner too close and for too long– warned him of time's deception.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity; his breathing slowed and he let the echo of the wind ease him into his senses and bring him back, slowly, to some measure of control. The feeling of agony, betrayal and doom was still there but as his senses were strung together he was able to push past the overwhelming uproar in the force and find equilibrium. When he could breath again he looked for his other self. He felt the dread pool in his belly for what he might find once his vision focused. The older Jedi had somehow pulled himself up and grabbed Obi-wan.

"Save him," the wounded man rasped, holding Obi-wan's wrist in a vice like grip, "Tell Anakin...Tell him...He was, is, always...my brother."

Even as he struggled against him the man was already dying. Obi-wan kneeled in the hot dirt and watched himself die.

He eased the corpse onto the ground, and as the misery in his head dulled into a thudding ache, he closed his eyes and sagged a little.

Every promise he'd made on attachment and the Code went flying out the window. It wasn't like fighting a compulsion, either, where you argue it back and forth through sweat and shiver; it was like blinking for a moment and finding out it had already happened.

Obi-wan stood and with shaking hands pulled up his hood over his head and prepared to drag the maimed and unconscious body of the man whom he didn't know yet adored anyway, away from the edge of the river of lava.

It hurt to touch this grown Anakin, for incredibly that was whom this man was, like a piece within him had broken off and settled somewhere else. Obi-wan pulled the man farther and farther away from the maw of fire. Sweat from heat and exhaustion dripped down his temple and into his already stinging eyes and he fell stumbling backward, the other man's head falling awkwardly on his lap. Obi-wan stared. Tentatively, like watching someone else– someone not himself, some other man unconstrained by an ancient and neglectful code of conduct– as they lifted their hand and ghosted his fingertips over the other young man's brow, and froze. He didn't dare follow through with such an obviously intimate act.

Not because it was so novel, but because it _wasn't_. He scrambled backwards quickly and inelegantly, the man's head made a red cloud rise up as it hit the dirt. Obi-wan frowned.

Strange how only a moment ago the act of putting his hand on the child Anakin's shoulder had been so unfamiliar.

Obi-wan had very little time to deliberate on this novelty, for suddenly Obi-wan's senses were on full alert. He ducked swiftly as a red lightsaber cleaved the air in half where his head had once been.

He barrel rolled to his left and came face to face with his opponent, his own weapon drawn and at the ready hoping beyond hope that this new menace was ignorant of the child hidden behind a nearby dune.

The face that greeted him made Obi-wan think that the Senate should be flogged. Flogging. Really. How uncivilized, his rational mind told him, but nothing about this day was at all rational so he ignored it and went with the flogging.

"Palpatine." Obi-wan said and it wasn't exactly a question.

Palpatine looked at him, half of his angular face covered by his black hood, the jagged edges teased the corner of his mouth and eyes. Wisps of grey hair framed dark, narrow eyes. He smiled and held out hands with long, slender fingers. "And who might you be? What is a Jedi Padawan doing on such a nasty little planet?" he asked him.

Obi-wan glanced at the braid of hair that marked his apprenticeship where it lay against his shoulder and was glad for the hood that hid his face. Memories that weren't his own slid by his consciousness and things clicked into place. _The rule of two_, he thought, _Qui-gon had fought with the wrong sith; a Master for an apprentice. And an apprentice for a Master. How very ironic_.

He shifted, settling into a defensive stance. "What do you want here?"

The sith spread his arms wide. "Nothing, actually. I just decided to take a stroll, and resolved to collect my apprentice while I was out," His grin widened. "I never thought I'd actually run into another Jedi. At least not one as alive as you."

"Leave." Obi-wan's voice was clear and hard.

The sith laughed. "Come now, child. You don't know a thing about me." He rolled his neck and pulled the edge of his robe back, revealing the lightsaber hilt at his hip.

"Do you really want to try and fight me, little Jedi?"

"If I must." Obi-wan replied.

He didn't even see the old man move but Obi-wan had to block a high swing, and had no time to deliberate on his opponents incongruent speed as he countered with his own attack. The Jedi's laser blade slid over the Sith's and into the flesh of his arm.

The Sith jumped back, holding up his arm to inspect the shallow burn. "First blood," he commented. "I underestimated you." He took another step back, smiling wickedly. "You can call me Darth Sidious."

Sidious attacked with a push of the Force. Obi-wan hit the ground hard and rolled, letting momentum have its way with him. He braced his ankle and pushed off, leaping toward the Sith, lightsaber raised. He dodged, not looking back as the red beam ripped through a boulder behind him.

The Sith charged Obi-wan, lightsaber swinging, and Obi-wan found he didn't have the time to dodge them all completely. He backpedaled, blocking what he could with his lightsaber, and turning so that what he missed only speared cloth. Sidious caught and tore at Obi-wan's robe, grinning cruelly as he tore through the dark material.

Sidious whirled, a backhanded strike aiming for Obi-wan's face. Obi-wan turned his head away, baring his teeth as the Force push opened cuts on his cheek. He continued his spin, swinging his lightsaber in a wide arc that forced Sidious to backpedal. He pressed his advantage, attacking quickly and never withdrawing.

Sidious defended as quickly as he attacked, and Obi-wan quickly found that taking the time he needed to call upon the Force would have been a fatal mistake.

Obi-wan stepped backward, ducking one swing and then darted forward. He swung low expecting the sith to fall back but Sidious stepped forward instead of pulling away, and that was all that was needed to knock Obi-wan slightly off balance.

The red beam sliced through Obi-wan's shoulder. At first Obi-wan felt nothing then an agony like that which he never felt before spread through his body. It felt like an explosion of heat and misery had taken hold. Obi-wan staggered back and even as he saw the remains of his arm lying in a pitiful mangled heap in the dirt he did not lose grip of his lightsaber.

Obi-wan's vision swam and he could hardly hear the cackling laughter through the buzz in his ears.

"How pitiful!" the Sith was saying, "When even their great Obi-wan Kenobi lies dead in the dirt the Jedi council thought to send a mere padawan!"

Obi-wan's mind reeled. Even with both arms he was severely outclassed. There was no hope in defeating the Sith now.

Obi-wan was going to die in a universe he didn't belong to the dirge of laughter from a deranged geriatric Sith.

Obi-wan closed his eyes and tried to release his pain into the Force. He only needed a moment without pain to think...A few years ago he had taken to wearing a concealed knife in his boot-- a disagreement with a large prostitute and her equally large pimp who decided to play keep away with his lightsaber had helped him come to this decision-- when Anakin asked about it once and though Obi-wan glazed over the specifics of one of Master Qui-gon's less thought out plans, the boy had thought it was a good idea...

"Your apprentice," he rasped his voice coming out a strangled wheeze, "he killed Obi-wan Kenobi."

"Yes. He is an exceptional tool. With him by my side I will be able to create an Empire that will stretch to every corner of the universe."

Obi-wan closed his eyes and let out a long suffering breath, "I see. In that case, your tool seems to be catching fire, Chancellor."

The lie took hold just as a bleary eyed and confused boy stumbled out from behind the dune. The moment the Sith was distracted Obi-wan Force pushed the older Anakin's concealed knife straight through the Sith's shin. A cry of pain and outrage reverberated through the force but Obi-wan was already on the run, grabbing the boy and hauling him towards the sith's speeder.

He collapsed on the vehicle sideways, but spared no time as he shifted the speeder into gear and hoped that he didn't pass out, or loose the befuddled boy that clung to his back, before he got to his destination.

A voice in the back of his head told him there was a transport vehicle not too far from here. Time was of the essence, he didn't think such a minor wound would hold the sith off for long and he needed to get to...Padme! A voice inside supplied, but– like knowing where the transport was, or the knife– he didn't know _how_ he knew this only that he did.

The transport finally came into view and Obi-wan's single hand shook on the steering of the speeder. Obi-wan cocked his head slightly to make sure the boy was still there but Anakin seemed to have fallen unconscious again. The speeder slowed to a crawl..

_Obi-wan!_

"Yes?"

_Cut off your braid, now._

When the voice in his head made the suggestion Obi-wan had no compunction about disobeying, especially not when it was being so demanding. Years of training, iron control, and a healthy cocktail of adrenaline, norepinephrine, glucose and oxygen were the only things keeping him alive and moving. So when he intuitively felt in his boot for the small concealed knife he, too, kept there, placed the span of hair in his mouth until it pulled taut and deftly slid the knife through the length braided at the base where it met his scalp he was not surprised at all that the action hadn't killed him.

Thank you, hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis.

Drunk with pain Obi-wan watched the braided length of hair fall to the ground.

Anakin lay curled up, he was small and had slipped between the seat and the small containment unit of the speeder and was effectively out of sight, which was good, Obi-wan didn't have time to deal with the questions that would surely arise if anyone saw him. It did not bode well that he was unconscious but maybe that was for the best as well. It would keep him from asking questions Obi-wan did not know how to answer.

Tiny white sparks flickered at the edges of his vision as his body finally threatened to faint. His head lolled forward grotesquely and he dropped the knife. His eyes caught something and he tried to keep his focus on the figure suddenly in front of him.

She was no more than a wobbling pinpoint at first, part of him reasoned it couldn't be her. Her common sense, caution and practicality would forbid her from playing into such an obvious ploy, but her figure was unmistakable. He recognized her and the roundness of her belly confirmed his suspicions.

But he didn't need that to recognize her. He had known her since she was fifteen. He was suddenly cold. It was a cold of shock – or possibly fear– that rippled from him like water; the Force bristled from him. He flew the speeder right into the cargo bay of the ship.

"Excuse me, your majesty" he informed Padme as he ungraciously slid to the ground and off the speeder, "I'm about to hurl."

The look she gave him would have been comical if he wasn't busy vomiting his guts out. He lay flat on his back and tried to forget that his entire right side was in agony.

"There's time for that later Master Obi-wan." she reminded him and shouldered his left arm. Most of his weight was on her and he thought,_ it can't be good for the baby._ He could feel the rumble of the engines start and the cargo bay doors close as the pilot droid readied for takeoff.

The last thing he remembered thinking as he finally, and conclusively, collapsed inside the ship was that she wasn't pregnant the last time he saw her– oh, about 14 hours ago– but he didn't think it would be prudent to mention it. From the moment he met him he had suspected Anakin was fast but _this_ was ridiculous.

* * *

Padme frowned at the Jedi. When she saw him speeding towards her a little scream of horror escaped her and she thought, _he's dead. Obi-wan couldn't bring him back and now he's dead. _

A low whine of anguish escaped her and she clamped her lips shut.

And for a fierce, bright and clearly mindless moment she hated Obi-wan Kenobi. _Murderer_, she thought, _he was_ yours _to_ protect _and you killed him!_

The feeling was dizzying in its conviction. She was afraid that the bright hot pieces inside her were going to open up and swallow her, gulp her down inside her own special hell so there'd be no more Padme left, just an empty husk.

And in that moment, a dreadful, irrational voice inside her head whispered: _Leave him. Why should he live when Anakin does not. Let his precious Force do what it will. Let him_ die!

_No_, she thought. how could she even entertain the idea? Her husband was gone– swallowed by the darkness– and she could not let herself follow in his tread. He was dead to her the moment he tried to strangle the life out of her and their child. She supposed she should thank Anakin, he had made it so simple for her. When he had tried to kill their child... it was a fixed moment.

She did not hate him, it was too soon for that ( she might actually never be able to hate him, but she wouldn't think about that now) but her feelings on the matter were resolved. Her child would always come first. It was something she learned the moment she conceived and was presented with the choice of allowing the pregnancy to continue and suffer the consequence of her marriage becoming public or terminating it and continue in conjugal bliss.

When Anakin choked her and she felt her child suffer inside of her-- how he kicked and jerked, fighting--as her body collapsed around him..! It was a simple matter of organizing her priorities. Padme closed her eyes and tried to compose herself. When she opened them again the darkness receded and Padme had a mission to accomplish. If she couldn't save one Jedi, she'd save the other.

She could push everything else far, far away, down deep where even she would have a hard time finding it again. Obi-wan had once told her that a great deal of intelligence could be invested in ignorance, when the need for illusion was deep. She had not understood then, and wondered how Obi-wan Kenobi, the perfect Jedi, could bend truths so easily.

I need to get him to a hospital, she thought resolutely forcefully corralling her mind from wandering. His entire arm from shoulder to fingertips was missing and from his breathing she suspected his right lung was on the verge of collapsing, if it hadn't already. At least he wasn't bleeding out, but his breathing was a problem. She hoped the Jedi had some special Force trick to keep from suffocating.

Padme stared at the injured Jedi and tried to organize her thoughts. There was little she could do for the arm, or lack there of, in terms of first aid, except maybe ward against infection. But there were other things that though unimportant now would prove to be lifesaving later.

The robe had to go, it was in tatters and useless and would only identify him as a Jedi. She went to retrieve her own black robe, it was a bit short for him but it would do for now, she thought as she stripped him of his hood. The fabric fell back and Padme gasped.

Under the dirt, sweat and blood a clean shaven Obi-wan Kenobi lay unconscious before her. He looked so...young. Vulnerable even. Without the beard he was almost a different person, a person she had not seen since Qui-gon Jinn's cremation. He looked almost wild this way, almost innocent, almost defenseless. The blood made him look sharper around the edges, his hair impossibly red, the blood running thin little rivers down his remaining bare arm, sliding down his fingertips and pooling on the floor. She didn't like his sharpness, the asymmetry seemed to bite into her unpleasantly.

"Padme...?" fevered blue-green eyes looked at her. Her breath caught. "I tried to save him. I didn't...couldn't. Not_ him_.

"Rest, Obi-wan. We'll reach a medical center soon."

"Has the Temple really fallen? The...Order?"

Padme nodded but he was gone again, with a shaking hand she ran her fingers through the shorn length of not quite blond, not quite ginger hair. She sat down in shock and placed one hand on her belly. What exactly had happened on Mustafar?

When they neared the medical center, Padme let her eyes grow round with alarm, her voice a painful shriek, and let out all her anger, frustration and fear into a blood curling demand for help. Her voice rose to a high note, cracked and ran back down the scale to end in moaning cries that echoed off the artistically folded aluminum ceiling. It was not hard to pretend she was panicking or that her world was crashing around her.

"My husband!" she cried as she entered the hospital, "He's been wounded!"

Padme hoped this was a good idea. Hiding in plain sight was terrifying, but it was Obi-wan Kenobi's only chance. Coruscant was the closest planet with the type of medical equipment Obi-wan needed, but it was also the most dangerous for Jedi. She hoped, with Kenobi's clean shaven boyish face and her own shorn hair and simple clothes, that no one would recognise them. She was betting everything on the fact that the Empire wouldn't think they were dumb enough to return to the city.

They were now the center of attention of a crowd already suffering from shock and fear from the aftermath of galactic coup and Order 66. Men and women ran to and fro in mass confusion people caught in the crossfire of the Jedi Purge, wounded and bewildered.

Most were civilian workers from the Temple hired to perform the duties that the Jedi were too busy to do themselves. Padme watched as a clone pried a small bleeding girl, no more than six, from the arms of a stricken man. The trooper hit the man with the butt of his weapon, dropping him to his knees, a move that forced him to bring his arms to his face and let go of the child. As blood oozed from his nose the child squealed in terror.

And instantly Padme knew: the child was Jedi and that meant... She looked away.

Padme gave a start when two figures pushed through the crowd toward them. Imperialists. Padme couldn't help the moan that escaped her.

"This looks like a lightsaber wound," one of the men said.

"He was caught between the Jedi crossfire as they fled the city, please he's not breathing, we're just simple trading folk...we– we're loyal to...Emperor Palpatine!"

Finally two medics pushed their way through and the look of heavily pregnant female was enough to keep too many people wondering about her resemblance to a certain senator from Naboo. Her pregnancy was yet a secret and her shorn dark hair cast doubt on any who saw her. The clone troopers backed off as a particularly fearless paramedic stared them down.

"Can't you see this poor man needs medical attention? His wife is frantic, leave these poor people alone. You've had your fill of blood. The Jedi are all dead. Let me do my job." the medic snarled and pushed her way through to Padme. Padme stared at the two red spots of anger high on the medic's cheekbones set against her pale face, and she thought the young woman looked a little like Queen Amidala just now: strong and full of righteous anger.

Padme felt hollow in comparison.

"Carry, on then." the trooper responded waving a disinterested hand in Obi-wan's direction.

Padme felt faint with relief. She watched in agitation, one hand placed protectively over her belly, as the medics carried Obi-wan away to a Bacta-tank and the OR. With any luck they would be out of there within the next couple of hours, though _how_ she had yet to conceive. _Where_ she had yet to apprehend and _what they would do_ once they arrived she had yet to fathom.

She slipped a hand into the folds of her gown and gripped Kenobi's lightsaber tightly trying not to think about the fate of the Jedi child that had been dragged away.

* * *

Author's Note

Hello, this is my first Star Wars fic, I have another account here with other unfinished stories, but two things happened: I finally saw episode III (actually that's not entirely true, I watched the end of episode III) and Sphere. There is no end to the plot bunnies when you're double teamed by George Lucas and Carl Sagan.

And then it hit me, what if Obi-wan and little Anakin found the Sphere? It all went down hill from there.

I was also really disappointed with Padme. I mean really? She lost her will to keep on truckin'? That's so dumb, especially when she knew her children were going to be in danger... I mean in episode I, every step of the way she was ruthless in pursuing the safety of her people and she hadn't even given birth to them!

So this is how this story came about, keep in mind I'm not at all well versed in the Star Wars 'verse, and what I do know is either from wikipedia or from other fics I've read here, Any inconsistencies or mispelling of planet names, people, or things is either because I didn't double check my sources or I just plain made it up.

Please review and tell me what you think, it helps with the creative process, so to speak. I really would appreciate it!


	2. Chapter 2

Scene II: The Host

_Obi-wan floated in the ether. His mass was unwieldy, and the darkness around him thick and brackish; a predator from the abyss. It was a threat without measure. Form without shape. Nameless emotions floated in the dark, and were the only things besides the burning of pain. Pain, which filled the universe, for there was nothing else. Nothing had existed before and nothing would exist after, for it would never end. Except, when suddenly, it did. _

_It was bright were he was, like an artist splashing white paint over a black canvas, like an explosion or lightening, its arrival fast and overwhelming. The affront of such an occurrence to such a normally grounded man was most irritating. _

_And he was not alone. He should have seen this coming._

"_Hello, Obi-wan." the stranger said. _

_Obi-wan frowned and took a very good look at the bearded man before him, "I should be saying the same to you."_

_His older self smiled briefly, though it was half hidden by his blond beard._

_Everything clicked into place, the sudden visions, the voice._

"_I would be a poor host if I didn't commend you on your subtlety of persuasion. Though I nearly cut off an ear, thanks to you." Obi-wan said instead, without returning the soft smile. He felt uncomfortably bare without his padawan braid. Though he knew he would have lost it eventually–and had even been anticipating it– the circumstance of its loss was most unusual._

"_Your arrival was unexpected. I had to improvise. And you must admit keeping your identity hidden has been most useful." the man said._

"_That depends on your point of view. I have yet to understand wether it's useful for me... or for you." Obi-wan replied._

"_Indeed." the other said._

"_Quite." Obi-wan inclined his head as if in commiseration, "And now that we're done with our monosyllabic expressions of arrogance, I'd like to get to the point."_

_The older man nodded a hidden smile tucked beneath his whiskers, "Please, enlighten me."_

"_I find you disturbing," Obi-wan deadpanned bluntly. "You are me, but you aren't. I can see myself in you. Or rather, you in me. But you are not me."_

"_Ah, then you will not like me. You will not like me now and you will like me a good deal less as we go on." The Jedi Master's smile shrank slightly, and he seemed to sigh without altering his even, quiet breathing, "But you will be me. Someday...In a way. I'm not sure that you will turn out exactly as I am, but you will be Master Kenobi someday, of that I'm certain. The problem of infinite alternate dimensions is as complex as the time paradox." His brow furrowed a moment, and Obi-wan forgot to keep glaring at him and studied how familiar that thoughtful frown was. "Particularly considering they seem to be tied up in one another, yet somehow separate as well. It's all quite peculiar."_

"_Not more so than getting absorbed by a large golden sphere and meeting your older self, I'd wager." His understanding of the situation was not sudden or even remarkable. Doubt and suspicion had been niggling the back of his brain the moment he had laid eyes on the dueling pair on that red molten planet. That Obi-wan was Force sensitive was a given but his precognitive sense in this case came not from the Force, but from some internal clock inside Obi-wan that told him that time and space no longer mattered, that this was not right... This is not where I need to be. _

_Obi-wan understood that somehow he had been transported to a parallel universe and this was his alternate self._

_Obi-wan was many things, but rarely was he speechless, and as he looked at the Jedi in front of him he felt as if he would never be articulate ever again. His eloquence was a big part of the reason that Obi-wan Kenobi got to be where he was in life, and in some cases even let him keep that same life. _

_There has always been a sense that his ability to explain things was tantamount to his ability to fix them. But the sheer complexity of trans-dimensional travel– while not unheard of, faster than light speed was a component securely tied to trans-dimensional travel, even the best mathematical theorists had failed to come up with any viable formulas. That it happened to Obi-wan, without even intention, was all quite a marvel– this has so far defied his ability to explain and down right annihilated his power to fix. And in this case, the latter was an even greater challenge than the former._

_He knew he should have launched that orb into the sun when he had the chance._

"_Ah, so an incident in the Relics Archive has brought you to us. I never did like that place, much." the older man replied._

"_It would seem with good reason." Obi-wan said his eyes and tone deadpan, "Enlighten me."_

"_Have you ever experienced the feeling of deja-vu? It's like a glimpse into the other side. The feeling that you've been or done something before because in another reality you have. That is what the Orb is. A window. Do you understand?" _

"_Not remotely."_

"_It was only a few years ago that we discovered that the Orb was some sort of trans-dimensional portal. But we were never able to make it work here" The man said to clarify, "Somehow in your reality, this was not the case. And so here you are."_

_Obi-wan nearly grit his teeth in frustration, "Yes, here I am. And now a nine year old Anakin was left unconscious in a universe that wants him either dead or as a tool for nefarious purposes. How completely unnerving."_

"_So it would seem." the man said his tone so neutral you'd never guess that the boy was anything more than a passing acquaintance."Though this does not explain why the Orb would transport you to _this_ time. Logically, if you'll pardon the expression, you should have been transported sometime thirteen years before now. Why have you gone through time _and_ space? I can not make sense of it and fear the answer lies within the Relics Archive itself... though of the two of us you're the only one who knows what really happened there."_

_Obi-wan realized how carefully his older self was trying to repress any mention of his former apprentice. It was after all something he would do: in case of emotional collapse, redirect, deflect, and divert._

_But his older self brought forth a different though no less compelling question, Obi-wan frowned, "You mean you don't know what happened there _at all_? I seem to have all your memories...though they are indistinct, some are only impressions. I know that the Temple has fallen and that Padme Amidala is carrying Anakin Skywalker's child. And that Senator Palpatine is the Sith Lord we've been searching for, though this last is not so much a memory as a personal encounter. I assumed the process worked both ways and that you would have all of my memories, at least the parts of it where our lives diverge."_

"_No. The Force has granted me passage into your mind, but it seems I'm only a visitor here. This universe has no room for two Obi-wan Kenobis."_

"_You are dead, then."_

"_Yes. The moment you stepped through to our world, my fate was sealed."_

"_I don't understand."_

"_Oh, but you do. And though you posses all of my memories, I am only a shadow. Even as we speak I feel myself fading and with time all that will remain is what the Force has given you of my memories and my...my attachment. To Anakin."_

"_A boy I just met. A boy who just killed you."_

_Passion, pain, anger— suddenly he felt those emotions in the Force, reflected inside himself, a raw bundle of power and hurt and desperation—the magnitude of the older man's emotions slammed into Obi-wan, powerful and poignant._

"Anakin may have fallen, but he was not the cause of my death! There is still hope! Anakin has _always_ been good. The sooner you learn this the_– " The older man cut himself off abruptly. The volume of his voice had not risen but it was delivered with a cold certainty that left Obi-wan chilled to the bone._

_He stood there, a casualty of shock, standing frozen on the outskirts of this metamorphosis, struck dumb by this passion in the guise of rationality._

"_I see,"Obi-wan said finally, once he had recovered his wits realization dawned at last, this time quick and merciless. The Force was the unifying matter that permeated throughout the universe. Split a piece of wood and one will find it, lift a stone and it is there. It lived inside him and all around him. Everything in the universe was effected by it. One of his earliest lessons with Master Yoda had given him these answers when he was still a child. What makes an apple an apple? _

_Why, when an apple seed is planted does an apple tree grow? Why not an orange? Or a plum? An apple was an apple because of its genetic makeup and yet, each generation of apple trees had mutations, differences that could not be counted in its parent. This difference, was a Force signature and every living thing had one. Everything had a structure and in that structure lay the code of a Force signature. _

_A Force signature was so reliable because it did not repeat. It was one of the reasons Force concealment was crucial when trying to avoid being recognized._

_And when Obi-wan arrived, the Force, and this universe, had to suddenly contend with two identical Force signatures. _

_It had long been theorized that the same Force signature can't occupy the same space at the same time. That is to say, a Force signature, and by association the being it is housed in, cannot occupy the same location in spacetime simultaneously. To do so destroys both sets of matter, since the molecules of the bodies are trying to merge into each other. He himself had seen a variant of this in the Clone manufacturing facilities. Clones grown near each other set up "resonance effects" in the Force, which, while it did not cause their immediate destruction, would drive them insane._

_But Obi-wan had not been turned into a pile of goo, as evidence would suggest happen. Instead there had been a great terrible pain in his head and– _

"_You loved him. More than any other and when I arrived– "Obi-wan realised._

"_I was distracted– " the other nodded and said._

"_And did not fight the pain you felt through the Force. I was able to push past it–redirect it..." Obi-wan continued._

"_But you had not been fighting your brother. I believe the energy from the Force put such a strain on my head that– " _

"_A stroke."Obi-wan finished, "How unbecoming."_

"_I believe so. Yes. You were expecting mass obliteration? A vaguely Kenobi shaped puddle of goo, perhaps?"_

"_Yes, well." Obi-wan replied flatly, completely unamused, though his face felt very warm, "Am I to infer that I absorbed you through osmosis?"_

_The man shrugged. It wasn't very Jedi Master-y of him Obi-wan though._

_"At least the universe didn't collapse in on itself." Obi-wan said.__ So the boy–or man, as it were– had not been the cause of this Obi-wan's death. It was only a minor relief to know Skywalker was only hoping to maim yours truly. If _that _is what padawans did to their Masters after years of loyalty, Obi-wan was better off getting a dog instead._

"_Of that we have yet to find out." the older Jedi replied, his face had become hooded. An expression that Obi-wan recognized immediately for what it was. Obi-wan Kenobi calculated, coldly, precisely, but he never was an emotional marvel. His older self was angry, and only one thing could cause such emotion. Anakin Skywalker._

_And then he realised something else,"I will not participate in whatever scheme you seem to have conceived in your passing." _

_All the anger seemed to bleed out of the older Jedi and he schooled his features once again into placidity. His unaffected, calculating expression put Obi-wan on full alert immediately._

"_What makes you believe I have an ulterior motive?" the older him replied._

"_The same reason I believe a death stick junky would have sex...for death sticks." Obi-wan countered._

"_Why, if I didn't know better I'd say you were being deliberately uncouth," the older man said, but he bit back a smirk, "I never would have thought myself such a pernicious, self righteous brute. No wonder Qui-gon never wanted us."_

_The fate of Qui-gon Jinn. It hit him like a brick._

"_But he is dead now." Obi-wan replied softly, he was in no mood to banter. It hurt to say the words, but it was an old pain, a mostly healed wound, tempered by the knowledge that his Qui-gon Jinn was safely in the Temple in his own universe. But he needed the confirmation. Needed to know that the foreign memories he harbored were more than just some cruel and vicious nightmare._

"_Yes," the Master Jedi's face had gone pale and wan but his eyes shone a translucent blue-green, "and she too will die, and her children with her, if you do not help her."_

"_So. I've become quite vain in my old age."_

"_Vanity has never been a vise for either of us, but I think you have a talent for survival, present self notwithstanding."_

_Yes, Obi-wan thought, it was never a question of egoism. It was a question of Attachment_.

"_No. It is out of the question." even as he said the words he knew what the other had been planning for him. What the other had been planning for him the entire time, right from the moment that he ordered Obi-wan to cut off his own braid. The thought of such manipulation didn't abhor him as much as he though it should, it was hardly even surprising, given the circumstance. "I will not take your place. Even if I could, what of the child? Anakin. He belongs here even less than I do. I will not bring the boy in harm's way. He may never be a Jedi, and after what I have seen of this world I daresay I'd die before I let it happen, but he's still only a boy."_

"_Even if it means the death of all we've ever believed in? Even as we speak our brothers and sisters run for their lives. But it is not for the knights and Masters of the Temple that I fear but for the young. Tell me, Obi-wan, even at your most reckless would you ever consider–"_

"_Enough," Obi-wan came down hard on his own temper, something he had not needed to do for quite some time, "That is a low blow. You better than anyone know that I would never even entertain the idea of leaving children to die."_

_The older man visibly deflated and Obi-wan saw just how much it had cost him to argue that point. This older Obi-wan had buried it all deep down, far, far away. All the sorrow, the guilt, the adoration suffered in deepest silence, all his love, buried, so that no one would know that it was still there, but he could not fool himself. And Obi-wan knew that his older self was no more adept at escaping his own worst enemy than the twenty-four year old Obi-wan Kenobi was at escaping the boy he used to be._

_Obi-wan sighed and said ,"Should I stay here? Play the Master and bring my own chains?"_

"_We always do." his other self replied._

_Obi-wan felt awash in resignation. It was the will of the Force. Why else would he have these memories, why was he here, if it were not the will of the Force? _

_No matter what universe they were in, Jedi didn't communicate through _osmosis.

_It was fruitless, pointless, and dangerous, but he couldn't leave yet, not when it seemed as though the Force had plucked him from thin air for this purpose. If he were to do such a thing, what kind of Jedi would he be? The truth was, he wouldn't be one at all, and that, he supposed was what stung the most._

"_I will do what I can. If I hear of any younglings still alive in my search for a way back I will bring them to Master Yoda. But I cannot promise you anymore. I will search for a way back, if– when– I find it, the boy and I will go home," Obi-wan gave the older man a hard eyed glare, "With or without your approval."_

"_I would not expect any less from a Jedi Knight. May the Force be with you."_

_Obi-wan scowled for a moment and said, "You are right; I do not like you."_

Scene III: The Madman

When Obi-wan awoke, he was in a small cabin in a ship, but that was all his fuzzy brain could discern. He could feel the soft hum of the engines below his spinal column and the cool recycled air as it hit the skin of his bare torso. Such fuzziness, distasteful though it was to his fastidious thought processes, was infinitely preferable to the defused pain spreading out along his back as consciousness returned..

Having isolated this particular grievance, he proceeded to consider the rest of his body, and was pleasantly surprised at perceiving little more than the normal protests of strained muscle and fatigue. Granted, there was the sharply defined ache throbbing behind his right eye and pulsing along the same shoulder-blade in a knife-edge of heat...he remembered his duel with the Sith–

His assessment was jarringly interrupted by the hiccupped flying of a medical droid as it began to _molest_ him. He felt the cold metallic digits of the thing as it poked and prodded his shoulders arms and abdomen. Lingering for a moment on a particularly magnificent bruise that blossomed from rib cage to hipbone, then moving quickly down his body toward the parts of him that Obi-wan rarely let anyone access let alone a droid–

"That's not malfunctioning." he told the machine severely as he quickly covered himself with the blanket and pulled his trousers back on.

"You are awake." the small droid replied, its robotic voice making each word sound like its own declarative sentence. It hovered over him blinking lights and beeping occasionally. Checking his vitals he assumed.

"Yes."

"I will fetch Mistress Padme– "

"No. Wait!" he reached after it but the small hovering droid had already whizzed out.

Obi-wan stared at the arm he had reached out towards the droid. His new arm. He flexed the mechanic fingers. His neck and part of his collar bone where flesh met machine was still stiff and sore, but he ignored it as he touched his chest experimentally feeling the hard bionic bones of the first two ribs. Beneath that, as he spread his awareness of the Force through his biological body, he understood that a prosthetic lung was concealed below his skin.

Machines didn't make the man– Anakin had once told him this very thing (well, not _him_...the other him. It was all very confusing)– but Obi-wan thought his new jigsaw puzzle parts morbidly appropriate when he neither felt like the Jedi Knight he used to be or the Jedi Master he would become. He felt like two parts of some mismatched thing instead of a whole person; a bunch of ill fitting pieces held together by sheer force of will.

"At least I'm still ambidextrous," he said to himself and allowed a small sardonic smile to grace his face. He was only 24, nearing his 25th standard years, and either was hardly the age to bury himself in depression.

He could hear the short hollow, mirthless bark of laughter of his older self echo through his head. Obi-wan ignored it.

He pinched the bridge of his nose in a rare display of aggravation and stood gingerly. For a brief moment he felt the world tilt and stumble about him but he straightened and refused to sit back down. He didn't think it would be wise to come face to face with Padme Amidala– former Queen of Naboo, present senator, and secret wife to his alternate selfs padawan– while lying down.

Clothes were laid out for him and when he recognized them, he slipped a blanket over them. Even the sight of them caused the older Obi-wan within him to lose reign over those foreign emotions that churned just below the surface; relentlessly, invariably, and for a moment he thought he too would crash and burn amidst those unnamed emotions.

The door to the cabin slid open and Padme spared no time in pleasantries. Obi-wan was almost glad.

"How is it that you left to fight sporting a beard and came back– from a fight that you lost an arm in– clean shaven and with trimmed hair?" she asked.

Obi-wan looked at the young woman in front of him. Her usually long adorned, well groomed hair lay in a simple bobbed cut framing her heart shaped face. She was obviously quite pregnant beneath the simple dark blue tunic she wore and her eyes were older, wiser– there was an edge to her that he'd never seen before and was reluctant to name– but in all other ways she hadn't changed at all from the fifteen year old monarch that he had known in his own world.

If he hadn't the memories that told him he had fought alongside her on some godforsaken planet, watched her confront vicious beasts bent on devouring her, an army of droids, tyrannical politicians and roaring, marching war with the same inner calm and unbendable logic, he would have believed her vulnerable, delicate.

"It was necessary. Much like the fact that we're no longer in Hospital. I commend you for your foresight, any prolonged stay anywhere would have proven...unwise." Obi-wan's face was schooled and his voice very careful, as if they spoke around landmines of Things-That-Should-Not-Be-Said, and one miss placed word could get them killed. Although, in a depressingly realistic way, the observation wasn't too far off the mark.

Padme sat down, and the slight relaxing of her shoulders meant that though she was well past the threshold of exhaustion in this instant, speaking to him, she had a moment of reprieve.

And in that moment he realized that Jedi Master Obi-wan Kenobi was a silent constant axis in the life of the people around him. They never really thought about that presence until it was jarred. So, he would jar it aslittle as possible in such a delicate situation.

And that included keeping Padme in the dark about what really happened on Mustafar for as long as possible,"Do you have a certain destination in mind?"

"We're headed for Naboo, but don't change the subject. Just what happened on Mustafar?"She looked at him with a mutinous, jaded expression that seemed to say 'Go ahead, hit me with your best shot; I'm prepared for the worst.'

"Ah, yes. Mustafar. Like you no doubt realized given your new haircut, it appeared at the time, that changing my appearance should involve more than just a change of wardrobe. Though a change of clothes would still be welcomed too."

"I did set out a change of clothes for you, did you not see them?" she asked, briefly looking over the blanketed clothing.

"I did. Thank you."

"Then why aren't you wearing them? They were An– they should fit well enough."

"It hurt to change into them." he said simply.

Padme was barely able to muffle the sharp intake of breath. Immediately she understood he was not speaking of any physical pain. He turned and left closing the door behind him.

When it came to her that he was gone, she turned and suppressed the urge to kick the nearby table an in ill disguised ire. He'd done it again, so smoothly it'd slipped just under her radar. Instead of openly avoiding the question, he'd manipulated the conversation until he could get away. It must have been hell punishing him as a child.

* * *

"Tell me he's dead." she rounded up at him as soon as she entered the cockpit. He was standing behind the pilot's chair watching the droid navigate through warp speed.

"Do you want him to be?" he asked softly turning to meet her face to face.

He wore his cloak over his bare shoulders, and though the thick fabric hid his bare skin from view Padme knew that underneath it lay sinuous muscle on a lean masculine frame. Padme understood Obi-wan Kenobi to be a handsome man, a fact that Anakin had privately teased her mercilessly about in their early years together (later, the teasing had not been so light hearted, and she should have realized something had gone amiss then) but she had never realized just how young he appeared without his facial hair. Perhaps that was the whole reason behind the beard to begin with. Perhaps his boyish face did not coincide with Obi-wan's view of what a proper Jedi Master should look like.

And like every second of these last few days she wished Anakin were here to ask him about it.

"That isn't an answer."she countered.

Obi-wan sat down, never taking his eyes off her face. He sat in grave silence for several long moments, and Padme knew he was mulling over just how to put what he wanted to say in a way that wouldn't alarm her too much, or maybe in a way that wouldn't reveal more than he wanted her to know.

Padme wouldn't put either possibility past the man. It was probably both.

She stared at him a moment more, her expression unchanging, but she knew he could feel the contempt rolling off her in waves. She too sat down.

Obi-wan seemed to make a decision at last, laying his palms flat against his knees and looking her directly in the eye. Such deliberate eye contact meant she wasn't about to get a full story.

"The last time I saw him, the Jedi knight that now calls himself Darth Vader was very much alive."

She sat in still, contemplative silence for a few moments, and she watched him as he allowed her to wrap her head around it, waiting patiently. She wanted very badly to hit him.

"I see." she said, instead. A new name for a new life. Anakin Skywalker discarded like dirty laundry. Oh, Ani, how could you!

"He will come for you. Palpatine has twisted him. You must hide."

"He'll come for you too. If there is anyone in this universe, apart from myself, that Anakin Skywalker has wanted, it would be Obi-wan Kenobi."

"How unfortunate for _this_ Universe, then." Obi-wan shook his head, "In any case, he thinks I'm dead."

"Well, how fortunate for you." Obi-wan seemed to ignore her bitter comment, she was well aware that she was overwhelmed, displeased and devastated but she just could not help herself from the puerile need to lash out.

She sighed wearily and leaned forward as far as her belly allowed her, fingers massaged circles over her temples. She'd known they'd have a lot to talk about, but this was more than she was expecting, she had made peace with his _death_. It burned her and left her gasping for air but she was _done_. Finding that he was still alive was...was unintelligible and she wasn't sure just how to take it. For now, she would just deal, set it aside and analyze to pieces at a more convenient time, "I will not hide like a coward. Anakin may be lost to us already, but I won't let Palpatine win."

Obi-wan stood up abruptly, his face ashen.

"Excuse the non-sequitor, but where is the speeder I came in?"

Padme looked at him quizzically but she answered, "I traded it in Curoscant for the medical droid."

Obi-wan froze.

She looked up at him to see something alarmingly close to panic swimming up to the surface of those unfathomable arctic blue-green eyes. "This is… not good. This is... most distressing."

"Are you alright? There are quite a few things that need to be addressed between you and I." she told him, ire still at the forefront, "and that trick will not work twice."

Obi-wan stopped and looked at her.

"Yes. I'm quite alright. Only tired. I think I might have left something of mine on it. But it's no matter I'll retrieve it later," he said tightly but he sat back down, "you were saying?"

"If...Darth Vader finds me, then he will not search for either of us. It would give you time to...plan. Though the Jedi Order is in shambles– "

"We are still Jedi and know how to disappear. Are you sure about this, Senator? He might hurt you."

"He has already hurt me."

"We must speak with Master Yoda. As long as there are survivors there is hope, there's no need to go rushing head first into danger. "

"Perhaps not. But something must be done. Though the Republic has fallen it will not burn." she placed one hand protectively over her abdomen, "I will not have my children be brought up in an Empire lead by supernatural lunatics. I'd rather die first."

"But you will not die. And I would not let you even if you tried." Obi-wan replied.

The statement stunned her but she had no time for rebuttal for just as he said the words he left.

Padme stood up gingerly and went to the comm, she was about to call in every single favor she was owed. Being both a monarch and a Senator had its advantages and she was about to exploit every one of them and more for the sake of the galaxy and her child.

* * *

This was not good. This was beyond not good, this had the potential to be downright disastrous. This... was exceptionally bad. Obi-wan cursed himself in every language he knew.

How could he have forgotten about the boy! How could he have lost the child?

Again!?

If Padme had not phrased her sentence so eloquently– 'Anakin is lost to us'– he would have happily waded in his own ignorance! Who loses a little boy twice within hours of his keeping? It seemed as though this entire universe– and certainly _his_ now– revolved around Anakin Skywalker...and he had left him, unconscious and very young...somewhere. Obi-wan felt like going spare.

But why had he said that to Padme? Obi-wan had no intention of overstaying his visit to this strange and decadent universe, yet the fool woman's plan surely meant that he would have to play a key role in all this. He had no time to right a galaxy! He _was not_ and would never _be _her Obi-wan Kenobi, Jedi Master and old conniving bastard.

So why had he said something so compromising to Padme?

Obi-wan at last admitted what he had seen shining behind her dark brown eyes. It was not understanding of her situation, it was a bloody minded determination to right all the wrongs in her life by any means necessary.

It was dangerous, and dark and unforgiving and Padme had fallen its clutches. She had seen the darkness, standing at the edge of the abyss and she hasn't turned away from it. She stared into the abyss, and she hasn't become it. But she is willing to manipulate it, not because she wanted to but because it was the only thing she thought she had. The only thing that would fix this mess. He understood that she was no longer thinking like a Senator. She was thinking in terms of guerilla warfare; how can I achieve the most damage with the least amount of expense.

Though Padme was a politician she could be ruthless in her pursuit for justice. A justice, without the saving grace of mercy. She was thinking like Jedi General Obi-wan Kenobi, and that unsettled him far more than he would have liked to admit.

He considered himself to be apolitical. Such a position was a necessity for profitable travel among the – no, former, now – Jedi council. But this had not always been so. Granted, his early years with the Jedi had been...illuminating– in terms of experiential mores– and he had certainly felt comfortable with the decisions he had made. At least, until that old specter had come to invade his head– But that was another matter entirely!

Now, Padme Amidala had come and reminded him that, while most _politicians_ might be unnecessary,_ politics_ was assuredly not. He had thought the broad mindedness of the Jedi in regards to the political arena could extend beyond the Temple, but what Padme was suggesting was surely suicide. She had nothing to bargain with except perhaps herself, and what would that accomplish?

Obi-wan hoped she knew what she was doing.

He couldn't promise himself to the girl, it was enough that he had to take care of the what a magnificent job he had done of it so far!

It was a jumble of contradicting feelings, like a sudden dose of schizophrenia. His world has spun itself off its axis, nothing was the way it had been when he had last been fully conscious. Sleep had solidified not only the strange visit in his head but the day's events, as well, into a tangled mess he couldn't begin to process. He couldn't separate the individual components, what was his and what _wasn't_, couldn't risk losing himself in either the yawning void of his _self_ or jagged chaos of the _other_ to sort things out.

Whenever he thought of Anakin he felt nauseous.

Part of him felt nothing for the man (or boy– both at this point) and part of him felt..._everything._

It set a dissonance in the coherence of his own autobiographical narrative. It irked him that he didn't understand his own emotions. This was why he was able to take everything in stride, this internal narrative. And the more he tried to compensate for the dissonance the more he felt the echoes of what was wrong. It made him lose track of himself in the oddest moments... Perhaps it was better to leave it alone, for now. No sense poking at an open wound, not when there were other pressing things at hand.

Obi-wan _knew_ he _had _to get back, and he wouldn't leave without the boy.

But he refused to leave his Master, either. Especially not after knowing what this universe had spiraled into after Qui-gon Jin's untimely death. Maybe this is what the Force was trying to show him by hurling them into this place. With knowledge came the possibility of prevention. If Obi-wan knew what awaited Qui-gon at the end of that corridor he could stop it. And if he could stop it...

He couldn't think; this was where a momentary impulse has brought him– trembling and pale, in a suddenly too constricting corridor on a ship headed towards a planet that was assuredly unsafe, farther away from the child that was his to protect.

Obi-wan felt a giddy sense of panic overtake him and for a moment he pitched and yawned in the narrow space of the corridor like a ship at sea.

"Stop." he told himself, and concentrated on his breathing.

_Release those emotions into the force,_ a dull, brutally frank, infinitely patient, insistently logical voice in his head said. Obi-wan took a deep calming breath. It was his Master's voice he heard and he was relieved that it wasn't the _other._

He couldn't let himself be blinded by the future when the present was already upon them.

Perhaps he really would go mad. How many sane people were able to deal with having two distinct individuals rattling inside his own head? Not many. In point of fact, hearing voices in your head? That was the definition of insanity. That, and doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results– but he didn't even want to think about what that proverb really meant for him considering his position in the universe...

He shook his head, as if the action would clear the mess.

When he realized he didn't know where he was going he turned and headed for the room he had woken up in. He needed to meditate and get in touch with the Force.

Obi-wan just needed to know that the child was not in danger. Anything else could wait.

Though the link in their minds had long been dormant, and although his Anakin was still a child, his alternate self had a connection with his padawan and Obi-wan thought that maybe this knowledge may prove to yet be useful.

And if need be Obi-wan would turn the whole universe upside down in search of his wayward charge.

Obi-wan sat on the floor of his room his legs tucked neatly beneath him and cleared his mind of all thought. When he was younger this had been extremely hard but after his teenage years Obi-wan meditated with a tenacity that even Qui-gon Jinn was sure was unhealthy.

The Force rippled and sang within him, guiding him through the fog for the one he lost.

Where

Where

Where

He searched through the frayed connections in his mind until he found the one he was looking for. There were two, something Obi-wan could hardly be surprised at.

Both were weak and bleeding, like torn tapestries after a madman had come and ripped the hangings off the walls, an old blue line greying at the edges and a smaller blue one. It was the bluer one that threatened to tear Obi-wan asunder. He grasped at it and with his very soul Obi-wan_ pulled_.

First nothing, then he felt it, a soft fluttering like the rhythm of a butterfly's wing or the beating of a child's heart. The child he was searching for.

Obi-wan's shoulders slowly lost their tension and this was the only sign of his relief. He was alive! And though he seemed displeased about something, he was unharmed.

In his quest to pinpoint the child's location, he failed to notice the sudden flare of recognition in the older blue connection, it rose and collapsed as if in a sudden and great sigh of satisfaction...or relief.


	3. Chapter 3

Scene IV: The Seven

The child Anakin awoke to a conflict between hot and cold, as if his body couldn't quite make up its mind what to feel, except a world of pain. His legs just under his knees seared in agony, much worse than the needlesharp pain in his left arm, and in his chest. He tried to groan, feeling the world tilt and spin around him. But even as he blinked the pain was receding, and he realised right away that there was nothing wrong with his limbs other than the stiffness that came from sleeping in the wrong position.

He lifted up his head and gently unfolded himself from where he was hidden in the speeder. He was in some sort of cargo ship, probably a merchant vessel, but there didn't seem to be anyone around, until he heard rustling behind a few crates of boxes.

Anakin froze and quickly tried to hide behind the crates but he miscalculated, the ever persistent fuzz in his head made him clumsy, and he slipped falling hard on his butt into a box and hitting his head on the overhang on the way down for good measure.

"Hey, who's in there?!" a surprisingly high pitched voice shrieked.

Anakin cracked an eye open and stared at the scrutinizing grey eyes of another boy. He was younger, but wiry and supremely harassed looking. There was a grease stain on his left cheek and his mop of dark brown hair looked like some small winged animal had once taken residence.

"What are you doing here? I thought I told your lot to stay put," the boy tried to look menacing, but with two missing teeth this was an expression he was incapable of achieving.

"Ugh," he groaned and tried to stand up, "What?"

He and the boy were about the same height though the dark haired boy was probably a year younger.

"Well. You're here now, might as well help me." the boy said while he continued to stuff pack after pack of something into a small wheeled crate, "What's your name?"

"My name is...I'm– I," Anakin tried and his brows furrowed in consternation, "I don't know."

The boy made a low whistling sound with the space left from his missing teeth and paused in his task to give him a slanty eyed skeptical look, "How do you not know your own name. It's not a trick question. But maybe that Temple of yours brainwashed you or something."

"I don't know about that. I don't remember. My head is a little fuzzy."

"That's probably from that big conk it took when you fell flat on your ass. Oh, well, come on, that horned girl will eat me alive if I don't get you guys some food." the boy shook his head in consternation and gave one of the small packets a particularly hard shove into the crate, "Lucky I'm helping you lot at all. Ungrateful wench."

"Where'd you get that speeder from?" Anakin asked pointing at the thing he had fallen asleep in. His only clue to who he might be.

"Pops traded for it from a pregnant lady yesterday. He didn't really need it and the droid he traded for it was worth way more, but she looked like she could use the help." the boy leaned in conspiringly, "Pops told me he thought she was the wife of the injured Jedi she was protecting. He was in disguise of course and unconscious to boot, after the Jedi Purge they're all runnin, but pops saw the lightsaber."

Anakin was surprised at the word. Jedi. He knew what they were and that he was...what was he to the Jedi? Did this injured Jedi and the pregnant woman know him? Were they looking for him at this very moment? He had been hidden away pretty well in that speeder, had they realized he was lost when they sold it? Did they abandon him?

"I didn't know the Jedi could marry." he said instead.

The boy shrugged, "They're not supposed to. Goes against their sensibilities, I guess. But maybe they made an exception for that lady. She was probably the prettiest lady I've ever seen. Even if she was fat. Top five certainly."

The boy went on mumbling to himself and Anakin only had half an ear to listen to him as they loaded the small wheeled crate with the food packets.

He was confused and his memory went all foggy around the edges when he thought he might remember something. What was this boy talking about? And what had happened? Where was he? He couldn't remember… he had been…there had been fire… and pain… he was screaming something… and then there was nothing.

Looking back on his own memories felt like a raw-burned wound. He didn't want to remember, even if he could. It hurt too much.

He only had the outlines of what he thought might be a memory. A man with a bleeding arm dragging him towards a speeder. A red planet. He thought he should be cautious of anyone who would manhandle him so thoroughly but there was something about the young man that drew Anakin towards him. Like a beacon in the vast darkness of space, softly pulsing, wordless and comforting, _welcome, welcome_.

He thought he should be alarmed that he had no memory other than this vague moment, didn't even know if he had a mother or a father. He kept expecting to be frightened or upset, but it was hard to be scared when he didn't even remember the people he was supposed to miss.

Only the man with the sharp blue-green eyes and the unseen light that radiated from him was locked away in his mind. Was he the injured Jedi? Anakin thought he must be, it was all too much of a coincidence, if he wasn't.

"Obi-wan." Anakin said suddenly, a flash of lucidity sparked through him and he caught on to the name and grasped it firmly within his mind. He had yelled this very name. It was the man's name, he was sure of it.

"Is that your name, then?" the other boy said.

"Uh, no. It's someone I know, someone...important."

The boy shrugged, "Well, I have to call you _something_– "

"Not _Obi-wan_. Just, uh, call me..." Anakin said as he looked around the cargo hold for a name, he didn't know why he should hold such a strong objection for the name but he'd rather be named after the packing pellets in the crate they were plundering than _Obi-wan_.

Thinking of something suitable on the quick was _hard_. He tried to think of things he liked but all he could think of was that the clearly perceptible rumble of the engines needed to have a tune-up. What kind of pilot let their ship run this ragged? "Just call me Pilot."

"Pilot, then. Han Solo." he said pointing to himself, "Let's get this food to that Jedi harpy."

He didn't have time to ask any more questions because the Solo boy was already checking down the narrow walkway to see if it was safe to cross.

They wheeled the crate down a series of corridors. Trying to keep the thing from tipping over sideways and keeping as silent as possible almost proved to be impossible and were almost caught twice by what Solo called 'pop's crew'. Pop's crew turned out to be beings as far from what he normally associated with a merchant vessel as you could possibly get and still not be considered smugglers. Though if what Solo said was at all true, they seemed to be smuggling Jedi. A bunch of hungry Jedi, from the looks of all the food they had pilfered.

_What kind of ship is this anyway_? Anakin thought.

Finally they arrived in what seemed to be the living quarters of the ship. They stopped in front of a door and Solo gave it a series of knocks.

Anakin's jaw dropped as the door opened and he was hauled in. The crate came along with him and spilled over sideways at his feet. Anakin looked around at half a dozen dirty little faces that greeted him and looked at Solo and a girl as they bickered. They all wore identical sandy and brown colored tunics, and with a start he realized it was an exact match to what he wore. No wonder Solo had said 'your lot' when they first met.

They were all young, most not much older than him and a few, clutched in the arms of the older children, could still be considered in their infancy. The girl that bickered with Solo seemed to be the eldest, though she must have been no older than fourteen herself. Though she wore the same colors as all the other children, her face was marked in war paint and she wore a peculiar white and blue stripped headdress. They looked like horns and for a moment he thought she might be what some called a demon, beings that lived at the edge of the universe and took the Force from you. On the side of her face all the way across her neck and collarbone like an upside down sickle a badly stitched wound marred soft tanned skin. A lightsaber hilt hung on a loop on her belt. She was a Jedi. They all were.

"Excuse me," Anakin said still a little stunned, "But you're hiding a gaggle of Jedi children in your _room_?"

"Where else was I suppose to stash 'em, you saw the cargo bay. The crew practically litters it and pops always knocks before coming in anyway, mumbling about a man's privacy or something," Solo explained his grey eyes flashing to the girl that stood beside him, "And if I didn't have a debt to pay to _this one_ none of this would be any of my business to begin with and you should be grateful. So there."

The girl instantly bristled and she snapped back, "I'll be grateful when we get off this junk heap. And we would have been fine without you, Solo. You were the one that insisted on trapping us here with no food or water."

"Like hell, Tano." Solo replied, "And I may have miscalculated on our food run, but I got it now so you can just shut it."

The girl opened her mouth but then snapped it shut and schooled her features in a movement that was so familiar Anakin almost gasped.

"And who is this?" She asked turning to Anakin.

"He's one of yours. Don't you recognize him? Said he was looking for an Obi-wan." Solo replied.

He had said no such thing! Anakin opened his mouth to correct the boy, but snapped it shut when he felt something...something strange.

The change in the girl was instant and in one moment she had her lightsaber out, and though she did not move, and save for the lightsaber seemed completely non aggressive, Anakin felt the desperation and anger stir all around him.

"_Where_ is Master Obi-wan Kenobi." the words were bitten off so roughly that it was hardly a question at all.

"I– I don't know. I swear." Anakin said, it was hard concentrating when wave after wave of emotion kept hitting him. She was very nearly at the edge of losing control and Anakin, along with the other Force-sensitives, felt the disturbance in the Force as it rippled around them. The green light of her weapon cast an eery blaze over her face, making her large blue eyes shine in an unearthly glow.

She _must_ be a demon, he thought.

The sharp wail of an infant seemed to snap the girl back into her self and she closed her eyes briefly and de-activated her lightsaber. She sagged a little and sat down.

"I'm sorry," she said but Anakin didn't think the apology was necessarily meant for him, he could still hear the agitated whimpers of some of the younger children, " It's been a long week."

She looked at him, crossed the room and put her hand on his shoulder. She was only a couple of inches taller than him but he knew under all that youth was a trained Jedi, and by necessity, a killer. He tried very hard not to be completely intimidated. In his short experience he figured all girls were crazy. And this one? Jedi crazy. A Whole other level of craziness Anakin wanted no part of.

"I'm glad you got out. We'll need all our brothers and sisters if were going to fight the Empire. I'm Ahsoka."

"Pilot." Anakin said. He stuck out his hand to shake hers.

She just stared– ignored him completely– turned to her fellow Jedi and announced, a small smile exposed perfectly straight pearly teeth, "Let's eat."

Anakin looked at his hand as if it had somehow betrayed him. He'll be surprised if he lived through the night.

Early that morning, so early in fact that he was sure that technically it wasn't morning at all, he was rudely nudged awake by a hard toed boot. "Get up, Initiate."

Initiate, Anakin thought. She had been calling him that all night. The other four children were all Jedi but only two of them were Initiates, Ahsoka and Pip were something called paddy-ones. They had told him that the Imperialists led by the Sith Darth Sidious and his cunning apprentice Darth Vader, had pillaged the Jedi Temple, killed the Masters that guarded her, and destroyed the Order. The Jedi Knights were scattered all over the galaxy. Many Jedi were lost. All the Jedi children were dead. Except the seven.

They told him he must be one of theirs and that maybe the images of what happened at the Temple were so bad that the Force had been kind and wiped it from his memory. Anakin didn't know the Force could do that. Gunn, one of the Initiates and a boy around his age told him that the Force was infinitely capable. It was not hard for Anakin to believe that this must have been what had happened to him, not when the alternative was too frightening to ponder.

Anakin wanted to ask Ahsoka how she had gotten that scar on her neck, but he didn't think the Force had been kind to her, so he didn't.

"What is it, Ahsoka?"

"We need to talk. Get up."

"Now?"

"Just do it."

Anakin rolled his eyes, got up and followed the girl as she slipped out of their room.

When they neared the end of the hallway Ahsoka whirled around and pinned him with a glare.

"I'm going to ask you one more time, what do you know about Master Kenobi?" she asked harshly, the statement twisted her young face into a snarl.

"What? I don't know. I already told you!"

"Why were you in that speeder? How come you don't remember anything? How do I know you're not a spy for _Vader_?" the name was said with such derision that her whole face contorted into something cruel and deadly. And at that moment, Anakin did not doubt that she would kill him if he'd even suggest that he may not be the Jedi Initiate they thought he was.

What had happened to all that 'brothers and sisters sticking together' stuff she had been babbling about?

Anakin hadn't lied, he wouldn't betray the Jedi. Not when betraying them would be like betraying the only person he knew in his only memory. In it, he was now convinced that the man who pulled his arm as they ran was Obi-wan Kenobi and that he had saved his life from the Jedi Purge. He knew this with all the conviction that a nine year old boy could conjure. That this girl would think he could betray the only person who meant anything made him want to...he didn't know what he wanted to do.

"I swear to you, Ahsoka Tano, that I don't even remember my name let alone any grand scheme to betray the Jedi. I don't know _anything_." his voice cracked and his hands had balled into fists and had Anakin taken a moment to realise it he would know that the Force was crashing and eddying around them both, "Only that Obi-wan Kenobi is the key to who I am and that means something to me. But I don't know what or even why. Only that he is."

"_So strong_!" Ahsoka whispered in bemusement, then, mentally gathering her wits and anger quickly gaining momentum she replied,"I believe you. But I still don't trust you, Pilot or what ever you call yourself. If you so much as breath out of line I will take you out. Permanently."

And with that she turned and left.

Anakin sighed and didn't think he and Ahsoka Tano would be best friends anytime soon. At least he made it through the night. Surprise.

Darth Vader, like the young Anakin, awoke to a world of pain. But unlike the boy, Vader's pain persisted, an indelible black miasma that surrounded him and ate at his insides until he couldn't discern where the pain ended and he began.

Vader lifted himself from the regeneration tank. It was a jarring contrast, young lithe musculature ended in grotesque emptiness. The young Vader looked like a badly treated toy soldier, new but for the result of reckless enthusiasm of the child that played with him. What was left of his limbs were little more than useless and he fell forward, his body slick and glistening with residue from the medical medium. He grasped the rim of the tank and hauled himself upwards, overbalancing and slipping, falling forward and down. He grabbed the edge of the tank and hauled himself up again, his forehead pressed against the glass. Relearn basic movements, he thought. Retrain muscle responses. Reclaim mastery.

He was fine.

And when he found Obi-wan he'd show him just how fine he was.

It made him angry to think Obi-wan had gotten away unscathed. He was angry and where there wasn't anger there was the cool, fathomless feeling of numbness. Emptiness, stillness without the comfort of peace. But this feeling was not new to him. When he thinks back to what happened as his mother's body grew hard and cold with death the disconnect is never too shocking.

Vader's left leg gave a severe twitch and he veered suddenly towards that direction. Sweat poured from his forehead and pasted his dark blond hair to his temples. He could barely stand without the aid of the rim of the tank he was using as support. But he would. Vader pushed off from the glass and stood. He would not add to the disgrace by allowing this loss to affect his skills.

"This is fine. I'm fine." he grunted lowly and stood up straight, his legs no more than giving a light tremor, but soon that passed too. Perfection must not be hindered by imperfection. He had been through this once before.

It helped, of course, that half of his legs were no longer made of flesh and bone. His legs had joined the mechanical realm of his right arm and were as unaffected by fatigue and pain as coarse metal.

He was fine.

He didn't want to think about anything other than putting one foot in front of the other. He didn't want to think about the woman or the man, or anything that would make Anakin Skywalker tremble with pain, because to Darth Vader those two individuals meant little more than stardust.

And _he_, Darth Vader, was _fine_.

He swallowed the bile that rose up in his throat and stalked his quarters.

The room was an austere, antiseptic place, more suited as an laboratory rather than any sort of bed chamber. His Master was not here. Vader gripped the edge of the metallic table, and for a brief dizzying moment didn't quite know which Master he meant. Vader passed a hand through his dark blond hair. It was getting too long again and he kept meaning to have it cut.

It wouldn't do to let an enemy have a strategic advantage through something as simple as yanking his hair. Though what opponent in their right mind would pull Darth Vader's _hair_ in a duel fought with laser beams was beyond even his imagination.

His brief battle for strength in the chamber he had woken up in was all but a fleeting memory and he felt himself renewed, even though it felt a little odd to think he had no longer any use for shoes.

_There are a great many things which Anakin Skywalker thought essential, but Darth Vader can do without. _

He felt the darkness come before he heard the swish of the automatic doors as they opened.

Palpatine walked purposely toward him, a small smile more wicked than sincere gracing his greying lips.

"You are awake already, my faithful apprentice."

"Yes, Master." Vader said, because he was fine. Of course he was. Vader was young and still mostly whole, a little thing like amputation was not enough to keep him down long.

"Come, we will greet the coming day with your accomplishments."

"What do you mean, Master?"

"Why, to visit Obi-wan Kenobi, of course."

He heard the voice as if from the depths of a long tunnel; the words echoed such that he wasn't quite sure that he heard them correctly.

But Vader was fine so he walked forward, followed Sidious as he promised to do. Distantly he noticed that the Sith walked with a limp, but he couldn't bring him self to wonder about it at all, only that he was going to see Obi-wan. Obi-wan who had called him a traitor. Obi-wan, who refused to join his side, _be_ by his side as always and forever. Obi-wan, who cut his legs and not his life. Obi-wan, who had refused to fight in anything other than the defensive.

Obi-wan who was dead.

Vader stared at the pale face of the man who was equal parts brother, father and adversary.

Obi-wan who was dead and Darth Vader who was absolutely fine.

The Jedi Master lay on a long metallic slab, his hands placed neatly at his sides. Vader did not see his lightsaber anywhere near and he assumed his new Master must have it somewhere. He wondered why that separation was leagues more alarming than corpse of the man staring him in the face. It looked like he was sleeping. If it weren't for the fact that Obi-wan didn't have his lightsaber Vader was almost convinced that he was.

There was a large diagonal burn across his abdomen, a lightsaber wound and not fatal, and one other that he didn't remember inflicting.

"I feel the conflict in you, my young apprentice." Palpatine said, his voice sickly sweet and completely devoid of any detectible malice, "perhaps you were hoping he would choose our side? That he would see to reason?"

"Yes." Vader swallowed thickly, but his voice betrayed none of the mess inside him, because really, he was fine and his voice couldn't betray something that wasn't _there_,"He would have been a powerful ally."

"Perhaps. But the Jedi are set in their ways. Ways which are stifling and cruel. I had to eliminate the threat he posed to us."

"It should not have come to this. Kenobi should have died by my hand or none at all." Vader replied he felt a queasiness in his stomach every time he looked at the pale face of Kenobi. Had his hair always been so impossibly _red_?

"I understand your incertitude, your frustration, but you must have faith that this was the only way to cleanse the galaxy of such corruption."

"Of all the things that Obi-wan is– was, corrupt was not one of them."

"Then you understand! How the Jedi take good men and twist them to their bidding. How they have taken your Obi-wan and fouled his very being until he could no longer feel anything other than an apathetic tolerance for the boy who thought of him as his brother. His_ father_."

Vader nodded his face a careful blank. Palpatine was right. The Jedi had polluted everything he ever held dear; his relationship with Obi-wan, his marriage to Padme, his promotion to the council where he could have made a real difference, where he could have been somebody. He even had to hide like a rat when he found out he was going to be a father when he should have been shouting it from the rooftops. And what was worse their indoctrination began at an early age. They stole children from their loving families and twisted them so that a child didn't even recognize his own mother or worse, recognized her but didn't much care for her fate. And the ones that wouldn't forget, the fighters, would be cast aside, constantly and unjustly stigmatized for the vast formless wrong that was the Darkside. How had he ever forgotten?

And yet, those same children died not so long ago not by his lightsaber, but certainly by his hand. He could have saved them, could have redirected the clones' orders, but he had not. Why?

"I understand the Jedi must be stopped, but the children, Master? It is my duty to serve you, but could I not have served a better way?"

He'd had doubts about the Jedi's Code for some time now. At first embracing the darkside of the Force had been almost a reflex, his last possibility to save the woman he loved, his family, when no one listened to his please towards intervention. But even before then he had seen the reason–the truth– of Palpatine's words. War plagued the galaxy and the Senate sat in their fat chairs quibbling over tax cuts, while the Jedi silently siphoned power from beneath their very noses and used it to lord over them their poor choices, ones made from neglect and a superstitious adherence to an ideal. The Jedi had to go, but were the children so guilty?

"Yes. The children. It was a brash decision, and one that may not have to be repeated, but the Temple's perversion was already underway, and it was too late for them. Do not trouble yourself, my young apprentice, they will have all their hearts desires, the Darkside is paradise for those who accept it wholly. For their souls to be cleansed they had to die. We have freed them, my boy, never think otherwise."

Vader felt a whisper soft tug in the Force, like a butterfly settling down on his head, just barely. Abstract, ideal and utterly familiar.

_Obi-wan?_

Vader's head snapped rapidly towards the body, but as soon as it had come the feeling was gone and all that was left was the lifeless pale skin of the man that for a moment Vader had thought was still alive. Vader shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts.

"Forgive me for ever doubting you, my Master." Vader replied, casting off the feeling as nothing more than fatigue.

Palpatine was right. Palpatine was always right. Palpatine had once told him that they all needed to look into the darkside of their nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. The Jedi are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying, and a man who doesn't know himself, knows nothing. This was the true nature of the Jedi, suppliants to the god of self-denial.

Of course Palpatine was right! And Palpatine, he listened to Vader, gave him a voice, when all Obi-wan ever accomplished was to make him sound puerile and ineffective. He turned slightly away from the corpse of Kenobi. He kept expecting to see the Jedi rise up and berate him for not only losing his lightsaber but both his legs as well.

_I don't need legs, old man. At least _I _still have my life._ _And it's not as though you had any luck holding on to your lightsaber, either._

"You are forgiven. Your feelings are, after all, understandable considering how you were betrayed, young Vader."

"To which are you referring, Master?" Vader turned completely away from the body of Kenobi, but as soon as he did he felt a vast formless unease, a sense of something soft and amorphous and horrible lurking behind his shoulder, waiting to pounce. How absurd! He had not been afraid of ghosts since his childhood, when thoughts of his mother and Qui-gon Jinn had kept him up at night shining his flashlight into the dark corners of his and Kenobi's apartment.

"Why, you don't know? Come. See what truth our sources have uncovered."

Palpatine motioned for him to follow him out of the room with Obi-wan's body. As soon as he stepped out Vader felt more at ease immediately, perhaps getting out of the regeneration tank so quickly had not been such a good idea if he was going to feel so ill so suddenly and then revert to normalcy again.

Palpatine led Vader to a large conference room where the holonet projector was positioned. The announcer was a stocky middle age man with a wispy white mustache that Vader thought too whimsical– foolish, even– looking for a man who's sole profession was to look austere and completely reliable.

"Reports of Senator Amidala's death came in this morning. The Senator was found..."

Vader blacked out for a moment though he remained standing and completely at ease, it was as if he had suddenly shut off. Like a droid in reboot.

When his ears stopped ringing his Master was already talking.

"...betrayed you with Kenobi. How little he must have thought of you– them both!– to philander with your wife. Why, the child that died with her might have not even been yours. So, you see, I understand why you'd question _my_ loyalty."

"I _knew_ it." Vader said and laughed. It was a murky sound– formless and bitter– but he forced the laugh out, black and horrible as it was, because it was his best option. Because he couldn't handle the alternative; and he wasn't sure if he could manage speech around the scream that was clotted in the back of his throat. There was a sob hung there too, and it tasted like shame, regret, and sorrow. But he ignored it and let the blackness fuel the void within him. Because now he knew the truth and Vader was fine with that too.

"I will be in Marroga tomorrow, and I need you to attend a meeting in my place." Palpatine said bringing Vader's attention once again to the old man.

"What kind of meeting, Master?" Vader asked his voice dull and exhausted sounding though he tried to hide it, it would not be wise to show Sidious what he was feeling at the moment.

"A simple matter of taste and common sense. I cannot think of anyone better than you." the Sith replied, his lip curling up in the first genuine sign of delight.

* * *

"OBI-WAN!"

A high feminine shout outside carried through his door. And he knew instantly who it must be.

Obi-wan stood and in one fluid move he was at the door, lightsaber ready.

What he found almost made him wish they were under attack. Padme was bent over double one hand on the wall steadying herself and the other grasping her bulging belly. Her face was red with exertion and there was a puddle of clear liquid pooling around her feet.

"Put that away! I'm in no condition to attack you," she said through gritted teeth and bent as another contraction hit. She would have liked to enumerate all the reasons she'd built up over the last few days to hate the Jedi Master. Seriously. She couldn't though, primarily because she lacked the breath for it, as she heaved and sighed while she strained in labor, "My water just broke."

Obi-wan visibly started and after a moment clipped his weapon to his belt. When the second contraction hit he was already by her side hauling her up onto his arms and carrying her over to his room and onto the bed.

"Get the droid." she said

"You mean that little flying pest?" Obi-wan questioned Padme, who, for just an instant, looked positively murderous, as if she envisioned nothing less than wrapping her small hands round Obi-wan's throat and throttling him soundly. Then he blinked and she was merely a bit agitated.

He didn't know why he never realized that she was positively _frightening_ before. He rose to do as she bid but stopped when he heard the whirring of gears.

"No need. I am here Miss Padme." the droid beeped and glowed and listed out an order of commands Obi-wan barely had time to accomplish before the droid began again.

"Vital signs are good." it said, "Dilation is almost complete. Two heartbeats are normal but the third..."

"Three?" Obi-wan and Padme asked in tandem.

"Yes, Miss Padme. Yours and your children."

Padme cried out as a sharp pain went through her abdomen, "there's something wrong!"

Padme gripped his hand tightly and did not let him go.

_Twins._ Obi-wan heard in amazement. Obi-wan closed his mouth on what he was going to say, startled at the active interest his older self was taking in the situation. He hadn't offered more than a few offhanded comments at random since his induced sleep; it felt... weird to have him so close to the surface, so awake and aware.

It was a little crowded in his head, and they ran the risk of blurring at the edges if they didn't watch what belonged to whom. His emotions were swirling and gyrating until he didn't know where the old Kenobi ended and he began. But somehow this thought did not sting as much as it should have. Obi-wan didn't push him back down, even though he knew he would probably end up feeling the repercussions.

Padme gripped his hand fiercely, but throughout the whole birth never said a word to him. He understood that she was grieving and that she was angry at Master Kenobi and therefor _him_, but he didn't understand why, when he tried to free himself from her hands, she pulled them back into her fierce grip.

"Don't leave." she told him vehemently terror seizing her every muscle.

"I had no intention of doing so." he told her calmly, hoping his voice betrayed none of the panic inside him.

When they heard the child's wail as it took its first breath and then his sister's strangled gasp as she joined her brother into the world, Padme burst into tears.

Around the little girl's neck, as if evidence of their father's brash actions, was the tightly wound umbilical cord. The girl-child was a sickly blue as the medical droid took the child into the incubation pod, a tiny respirator rapidly placed over her mouth and nose pumped oxygen into her starved lungs. Her mother didn't even have a chance to touch her as she was whisked away.

The stress of the situation she found herself in would have broken anyone else ages ago, but Padme had always been an extraordinary woman. And even when the galaxy was crashing around her the only evidence of her panic were a few clear tears.

"My babies!" She cried as the droid placed her son in her arms. She held him to her chest, and continued softly begging, "please, don't let Leia die."

Obi-wan nodded as if in agreement, Padme wiped her face clean of tears and when she looked at him again it was with that same cool gaze he had always admired.

She pressed the boy into her chest until exhaustion finally overcame her and she slept.

What seemed like hours later, but was merely minutes, Obi-wan approached the medical droid where it had retreated to the privacy of the med bay of the Interceptor. It floated and hummed midair, a thin glowing cord docked the machine to an external power source. The baby girl– Leia, her mother had called her– lay within the droid's incubation pod. Electrodes monitored the child's laboured breathing. She wore a tiny transparent respirator over her mouth and nose, but her skin still held that soft unhealthy tint of blue. Obi-wan placed a hand on the glass of the incubator. She looked cold.

She was tiny and pale and dying and Obi-wan was unsure that he could keep his promise.

"Droid– " he began unable to remember the machine's designation, the unmannerly introduction was telling of how completely the situation had unraveled the older Obi-wan inside him. Where the young Obi-wan would have been respectfully dispationate, sad– yes, because Obi-wan had never been a heartless man– the other was clearly and irrevocably invested in these children. So much so that it bled into the real Obi-wan's consciousness.

The droid beeped and trilled, not unlike the first time Obi-wan encountered it, and for all its similarity was wholly unlike R2D2.

"My designation– name– is M.O.3. Medical Operative class 3. You may call me Moe."

"All apologies, Moe," Obi-wan replied unfailingly polite, "I have not been...myself. How is the child?"

"Infant female suffered severe respiratory failure due to trauma. Possible anomaly of the cardiovascular system. Low birth weight. Lungs compromised, external respiration needed, chance of survival outside incubator without hospitalization: 32. 56%"

Obi-wan didn't so much walk out of the room so much as fled. He felt the gorge rise in his throat, and knew it had nothing to do with indigestion or any physical side affect from his new arm. This was emotional. He felt _guilty_.

_This is your doing! _Obi-wan told the Jedi in his head.

_I am doing nothing more than what it is you want to do, _the other calmly replied.

_That is patently untrue. I should have been gone hours ago to collect the boy and find the Orb, and yet here I still am...forced to watch some innocent child– This is because of your influence, your guilt!_

_My guilt is your guilt, or are we not both Obi-wan Kenobi?_

_Nothing more than a logical fallacy._

_To what end?_

_In that all cows are quadrupeds but all quadrupeds are not cows. _The argument was a bit silly but he did not take kindly to being emotionally exploited, not when such a compromised individual held lives in the palm of his hand.

_And yet your conclusions do not follow from the premises._ _It is good that you were there, they needed you._

_They shouldn't have. My duty is not to them. You have invested too much time to a cause that has imploded in your face. _This was true, the older Obi-wan's attachment had caused them– he, Anakin, Padme– all to collapse, almost spectacularly.

_If ever there was a reason for the Code it was _that, he told the man_._

_Such is the folly of man, _the Jedi said softly_._

He thought of the baby girl in her tiny little nut shell as machines pumped air in and out of her fragile lungs._ Enough._

_We are not the same man_, Obi-wan told the other coldly and shut his mind to all influence, corralling the spirit of the Jedi that lurked within him. Arguing with a person who knew your every logical process– someone who often structured rhetorical patterns that obscured the logical argument to their own ends and knew how to do it properly– was like trying to stop a flood with a thimble. It was both farcical and nonsensical.

Even now Obi-wan was being manipulated. And though this was not entirely the ghost's fault– neither of them had asked to be assimilated, and though the older Kenobi tried to hide his turmoil and the younger tried to believe it wasn't there, neither of them were any good at being overtly emotional– it was unerring to think himself possessed.

When he went back to Padme, he found two dark eyes staring at him from across the room.

Padme lay awake on her bed, the infant boy sleeping soundly in the crook of her arm. She rose, as if the power of the words trapped in her throat physically propelled her forward, "How– "

"She's asleep. The Droid– Moe– advised that she be transferred to a hospital as soon as possible."

Padme tried to rise, but Obi-wan saw the fruitlessness in the gesture. "You need to stay in bed, Senator."

"I need to be there!"

What came out of his mouth next was as much a warning to the older Kenobi as to the young woman that thrashed in his arms.

"There is nothing you can do for her in this state. You need to regain your strength. Fretting over her incubator in hysterics will serve no other purpose than to exhaust you and your children. And what use will that be when the Empire comes to call?"

She slapped him, the sound of her hand meeting his cheek broke the silence after Obi-wan's blunt reprimand and woke the baby boy.

His cheek bore a bright red bloom of a palm print against his pale skin and though he really wasn't all that surprised that it had come to that, neither of them everted their fierce gaze.

Though Padme lay back down he did not remove his hand from her arm. He watched the young woman carefully and she pretended not to feel his eyes on her, gingerly blowing kisses on the forehead of her son, arranging his tiny clothing, soothing the crying boy, savoring the moment. His stare bored into her as she tucked an escapee ash brown lock behind her ear, waiting, biding his time with all the patience in the world until she looked up at him. Neither of them apologized, each knowing they were right. Her bright brown eyes held a hard scorn, but underneath the contempt shone a dark respect. She nodded once slowly, and he removed his hand from where he touched her gently on her upper arm in his bid for her reserve.

"This is Luke," Padme said at last, and offered him the small bundle.

Obi-wan hesitantly lifted the boy from his mother's proffered arms. He had never held an infant before, his visits to the Temple's creche were few and far between, and he wondered if they were all as boneless as this one seemed. Surely this creature was still not...done.

Luke sighed in contentment in his arms and Obi-wan let a brief but sincere smile cross his lips. Maybe small pathetic life forms were not so bad after all. He guessed his Master must be laughing somewhere in amusement...in fact, he was sure of it.

The boy lifted his chin slightly and through golden lashes looked at Obi-wan with familiar blue eyes.

Sadness, deep and poignant slammed into him so hard suddenly that his knees nearly buckled. This was no longer a case of attachment, it wasn't a misguided bid in release of loneliness. His older self wasn't just _attached_ he was... Suddenly something became terribly clear for Obi-wan; Blue eyes. He had never seen the like except in Anakin. Anakin who wasn't just his best friend, or his brother. He was his only thing, his everything. His anything.

What he felt for Qui-gon Jinn paled in comparison to what the older Obi-wan Kenobi felt for Anakin Skywalker.

_Obi-wan?_

Obi-wan placed the boy beside his mother before he dropped him entirely and walked in tightly controlled strides across the room, shielding harder than he had in his life.

_It's Anakin!_

_Get a grip on yourself, Kenobi!_– he warned the specter in his head, he knew perfectly well whom that voice belonged to.

All of five minutes under those deep blue eyes and he'd nearly managed to unwittingly undo four hours' worth of meditated control. He felt like he was unraveling at the edges. And what was worse, it that nanosecond of upheaval he'd let his shields down...and the Sith had found him. The same way he had found the boy on a backwater planet called Marroga. And the Sith would come for him– if he realised who he really was, _believed_ that the whisper soft feeling in his head was more that just a trick of an exhausted mind– just as he intended to go for the boy.

_Perhaps his finding us would not be so unfortunate._ There's still hope he's–

Obi-wan came down hard on the older man, walling off parts of his mind like a puzzle box in the hands of Yoda. Surrounding the older Kenobi's energy with his own mental shields. That's enough of _you_ for one day.

"You have beautiful children, Padme." he said and beat a hasty retreat out of the room, needing the time to think about what exactly just happened. Dark blue eyes haunted his heels.

* * *

Ahsoka Tano wasn't a demon, but she fought like one. It had been three days since they parted ways with Han Solo and his pops 'merchant' vessel. Days since he felt that odd curl of gentle prodding in his mind. A silent voice that asked him where he was without words. Soothed him without explanation. Called him home, made him wistful for home, even if home for him wasn't a place but an idea colored equally by longing and anxiety.

In the brief time they had traveled together he had grown to like the dark haired boy, and it was nice having someone else around who didn't think the sun shined out of Ahsoka Tano's ass.

When they departed the other boy had extended his hand and placed the metallic hilt of a lightsaber into Anakin's hand.

"Thought you might need it. And the shit fit Tano would throw at giving it to _you _and not one of the other proper padawans...?" Solo grinned widely, "That's just a bonus."

They had landed on Marroga, a planet where Imperial rule was not yet fully established. The planet had been going through a worldwide depression so the sight of seven orphans begging on the streets was no novelty. Tano agreed that this was a good place as any to hide until they got wind of any other Jedi.

Anakin took the lightsaber without asking how in the world the boy had acquired such a piece knowing he would need it. If he continued down this path Han Solo would be one hell of a smuggler someday.

Now, Anakin wished the Solo boy had given him a speeder instead, they needed to get _away_, not engage the enemy in self taught combat.

And compared to Ahsoka Tano his skills with a lightsaber _sucked_.

The girl was no more than a blur as she sliced through their attacker's defense. They had been ambushed by slavers, thinking they had come upon a group of unsuspecting merchandise when they realised that these were no ordinary children.

But the slavers were quick and long in their line of work and before he knew it Anakin had been caught and chained to a cell in some basement. They had told him he was about to be sold, but the buyer preferred dark haired boys so they cut his hair and dyed it black. The little round pills they gave him made the follicle change composition at a genetic level, they told him. Anakin didn't really care, the little pills tasted sweet and he was so hungry that he took them without protest and sucked on them slowly until they were all gone.

His hair would from then on grow out black. He wasn't sure what to think about that.

The hair cut was another matter entirely. It was nothing short of silly, longer on the top and shaved closely to his skin at the bottom. It made his face seem less round, his eyes larger and bluer against tanned skin that now looked pale compared to his jet black hair. He almost didn't recognize himself, and felt, for the briefest moments, fear that he would never know who he really was.

It didn't actually look bad– his new appearance– but Anakin was unused to it. He disliked it, loathed it, especially because it was meant to please a slaver.

Anakin glumly scratched the shaved bristles near his nape. It had been three hours since he had been captured and though they had not harmed him Anakin had no faith that this would be the case for much longer.

Suddenly he heard a strange bird call and knew instantly that the Jedi initiates had come for him. And sure enough Ahsoka Tano entered in a blaze of green whirling fury as the slavers fell one by one to her onslaught. Pip, the second oldest at thirteen and the one who sent the bird call, took a small pouch from her tunic and choose from a series of lock picks. Using a combination of a Force push and the pick she made short work of Anakin's manacles.

"What took you so long?" he asked, "Not that I'm ungrateful. I didn't think Tano would risk it."

Pip shrugged, but the Jedi weren't known for sugar-coating things and their children were no exception, "That's why we took so long. The risk outweighed the pros. Until Gunn noted that as far as we know, we might be the only Jedi left. And that includes you. And Ahsoka would rather die than cause the Jedi extinction."

"Oh, well, yay for me."

"Indeed." Ahsoka deadpanned when she suddenly appeared before them, the lightsaber Solo had given him in her outstretched hand.

The unarmed Gunn and Ila were safely hidden protecting the infant Jedi as Anakin, Pip and Ahsoka confronted the enemy.

"Please," one of the men begged, the last still standing, "I didn't know we were transporting children!"

He had no weapon, and throughout the fight, had not joined in the fray. Anakin didn't know if he was lying or not, but something in the man's anguished eyes told him he was not a slaver.

"I don't think he's lying, Ahsoka." Pip told the other girl.

"He isn't." Ila confirmed appearing from her hiding place, though Anakin didn't know how she could know this. Ila was quiet in a pensive sort of way and Anakin thought that she didn't really seem like a Jedi at all. At least not like the other three children. Ahsoka was ruthless with a light saber, Pip was a menace with any sort of lock and her Force push was something to be reckoned with. Gunn was just bizarre. Anakin had never met another being who could calculate numbers and strategy as quickly as the ten year old boy. The two infants they carried strapped on a sling on each of their backs were too young and Anakin dismissed them as something they had to protect but that offered no real help, a little bit like the shy Ila , actually.

Ahsoka had cornered the man, her face a blank slate, but Anakin understood her intent without any incertitude.

"He should have known." she all but snarled, a hollow look spreading across her face, "Now he will never make the same mistake."

Ahsoka raised her lightaber and prepared to decapitate the unarmed and semi-conscious man.

"Tano!" Anakin yelled, his voice clear and hard.

Ahsoka whirled around, blue eyes flashing, "What? They deserve this and more. Filth like this shouldn't be left alive to ruin kids like they do."

There was so much hate in her that Anakin stepped back a little. He didn't understand her anger or her hate. She didn't even like him all that much.

He knew that these men were bad, and maybe they did deserve to die, but who were they to make that decision. And if it was so easy to kill what separated them from the things they abhorred the most?

"If you kill him, what will that prove?" he asked her sincerely.

Ahsoka stood guarded but her lightsaber lowered and then after a moment, de-activated, and she stood straight.

"Only that the Dark Side is strong and I am closer to it than I've ever been." she whispered so softly that he had to strain to hear. She hid her lightsaber in the folds of her black cloak and walked away.

"I like your hair, Pilot." Ila said shyly to a stunned Anakin, her own long blond hair looked like sun on wheat as she turned to him.

"Thanks." he said.

She grinned and busied herself with helping the babies back into their slings and continued, "She'll come around. It's not easy, being who she is."

Anakin shrugged and continued to follow the rest of the gang as they looked for shelter. They still needed to find a place to sleep for the night.

The next day Anakin swallowed the lump in his throat and haltingly asked the question that had been bugging him, "Did you...W-Where you a slave?"

At first he thought Ahsoka would just ignore him, and continued to stack the crates of fruit onto the transport vehicle. They had been able to find small labour jobs, fixing droids, hauling vegetables, recycled droid parts, nothing that payed much but things that would pay enough to help the children buy food and other necessities, the rest they relied on the kindness of others though it pained them to do so. The Jedi were trained to be self-sufficient and Anakin was no different from his comrades.

As always, they hid from the law. It was always, 'Oh, my mother is out, but she will be back soon.' or 'I'm caring for my siblings and cousins until my father returns from the fields' and when a well meaning mother or father looked at them too closely they would pick up their meager belongings and head for the next town.

Just when he was about to give up on ever being answered she sighed and looked him in the eyes.

"No, but someone I once lo–knew was, and he was tainted by it." Ahsoka said finally.

"Where is he?"

"It doesn't matter. He's dead now. And so are we if we don't get out of here and find Master Kenobi."

There was such longing there that Anakin almost sagged under its intensity. Even though Anakin's memory was non-existent, he knew Obi-wan Kenobi from his vision. He had grabbed on to that single brief moment like a drowning man grabs onto a life-preserver. Ahsoka's own memory of the Jedi Master was only fuel to the fire and soon Master Obi-wan Kenobi was no longer just a man, or even just a great Jedi.

He was...He was everything they could conjure as they silently fashioned him from their own imaginations. He was nine feet tall and could jump a thousand feet and run for a hundred miles without tiring or stopping, he could wield three lightsabers in tandem, and live without oxygen for days. He was terribly handsome and his eyes alone made women swallow their tongues and men go green with envy and, in a few unsurprising cases, vice versa. He could not be killed and even if he was the Force so indulged him that he would be brought back, for he was its favored child and the Force would not bare the loss of his existence.

He was all they might ever hope to aspire to or emulate. He was everything good, and wise and incorruptible.

All five of the oldest children longed for the protection and strength Master Obi-wan Kenobi represented. The broken Ahsoka more than any of them.

It was this hope and the death of one of the babies that shattered her when they heard that he had been murdered.

* * *

okay. A few comments: In real life (ahem...you know what I mean) Anakin was mutilated and Obi-wan walked away Scott free ( a pun! get it? Ewan Mcgregor is a Scot! Okay I'm done.) I think that went a long way in cementing Anakin's hate for the other Jedi, even if he hadn't been completely Dark when they fought, even after what he did at the Temple, he sure was after Obi-wan basically left him to die a horrible, excrutiating death from the man that said he loved him! Here Anakin's Obi-wan died, the hate was cut off at the knees so to speak, sure Anakin lost his footsies but Obi-wan, for all respects and purposes, was the one to pay the final price at Palpatine's hand no less.

To clear that up, Obi-wan suffered a stroke caused from the wonkyness of the Force, but he wasn't completely dead, Palpatine shoved his lightsaber through him to be sure. So Anakin now believes himself to be Vader but there's really nothing left to anchor him into the Darkside, except maybe thinking that his wife and best friend were playing find the trouser 'saber behind his back. Anakin might even think her death was well deserved. He sure as hell didn't give a rat's ass when he was strangling the very pregnant Padme. And that was only because Obi-wan and Padme had been standing next to each other, imagine what Anakin would do if he was told (by someone that at this point he trusts implicitly) that they had been having sex? What he would think. It would only be dark things.

Palpatine knows this, because he's a wily fuck and so spun this whole sordid tale and fed it to the press. Palpatine wasn't a politician for nothing, either. What best way to discredit someone (who might even be seen as a martyr) than to show them as being adulterous liars? Especially to such a well liked politician as Padme had been. Any support she might have had with dissenters of the Empire will now be a lot harder to convince.

Also what would happen to Ahsoka Tano? As you can see I'm taking extreme creative liberties.

Thanks for reading, seriously guys, thanks! Please review, I'd love to hear what you think, even though I may be late in replying. I'm in med school, we don't get a lot of free time, but i'll try to get a dialogue going if anyone is interested.


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